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Surgeon `went against basic medical procedure'

Gynaecology scandal: Hospital investigation found that 50 of doctor's operations ended with `serious complications'

Jeremy Laurance
Monday 16 November 1998 00:02 GMT
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RODNEY LEDWARD was an incompetent and irresponsible surgeon. The catalogue of harm he caused to patients was horrific. While performing a hysterectomy on one woman he perforated her bladder. After ordering a test, he left her, bleeding, and went home, having switched off his mobile phone.

In another case, the consultant gynaecologist from Kent performed a hysterectomy on a 48-year-old women so badly that she lost two litres of blood. He then wrote to her GP to say the procedure had been "uncomplicated". In fact, the blood had leaked into her abdomen and required further surgery to remove it and her condition had been approaching a state of haemorrhagic shock.

This much we know from the investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC) last September which ended with Mr Ledward, a doctor for 33 years, being struck off the medical register. What is only now becoming clear is the scale of the damage he caused.

The charges in the GMC hearing related to 14 cases over a period of seven years from 1989 to January 1996 when Mr Ledward was suspended from his National Health Service post at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent. Charges in four of the cases were not proved and Mr Ledward was found guilty of serious professional conduct on the basis of the remaining ten. He is now barred from practising in the NHS and in private sector.

In the six weeks since the ending of the case, 179 women have contacted the hospital in the belief that they, too, may have been victims of Mr Ledward. A public meeting held on 29 October was packed with 65 people when a dozen had been expected. Women who had suffered in silence for years stood up in front of strangers and described intimate symptoms which had left them debilitated and in some cases had destroyed their lives.

June Halkins, chief executive of the South-east Kent Community Health Council, who attended the meeting organised by a patient support group, said: "The stories were very moving. I was amazed how many were prepared in a quiet and dignified way to talk of their experiences."

Mr Ledward was appointed consultant gynaecologist at the William Harvey hospital in 1980 but he also operated at St Saviour's private hospital in Hythe run by the insurer Bupa and at other private hospitals. During the GMC hearing, two former colleagues testified that he had gone against "basic medical procedures" in operating on one patient. The GMC found that in three of the ten cases, the treatment he gave was "inappropriate" or had "no scientific basis."

After Mr Ledward was suspended in January 1996, an internal inquiry at the William Harvey examined 150 of his operations and found that one-third had ended with serious complications of which 12 showed evidence of incompetence. What is unexplained is why a surgeon whose errors were so gross that patients almost bled to death and whose colleagues were left to patch up his mistakes, was allowed to continue in practice for so long.

The hospital maintains that it acted as soon as it had sufficient evidence. A spokesman said: "We are very concerned about these women and we are trying to meet their needs. There had been concerns expressed about Mr Ledward but there is a difference between allegations and evidence. Establishing evidence of surgical incompetence is very difficult."

Jean Robinson, a former GMC member and a researcher at the Association for Improvements in Maternity Services, said: "This is much worse than the Bristol case [in which babies died from heart surgery]. No one suggested the Bristol surgeons ... acted recklessly or operated when they didn't need to. We need an external inquiry to discover who knew what when, who was responsible and how many other of these guys there are around."

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