Twenty women had breasts removed unnecessarily, NHS trust admits

Pam Brown from Durham was an NHS patient who underwent a mastectomy in 2022 at Spire Hospital in Washington, where one of the outsourced private clinics was based.

As with Denise and Jo, Pam does not know who carried out her operation. Bhatti was the consultant overseeing the care of all three women.

As far as Pam knows, her mastectomy was necessary. But the scars left behind – both physical and psychological – have deeply affected her.

We have shown photographs of Pam’s scarring to Liz O’Riordan, a former breast cancer surgeon. She describes them as “awful” and says she has never seen anything like it: “That’s not acceptable at all. I’d have brought her back for revision surgery.”

Concerns were also raised last year in a report by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) that breast cancer cases had not been discussed properly in multi-disciplinary team meetings (MDTs).

These meetings are designed to ensure treatment plans are reviewed and challenged by surgeons, radiologists, pathologists and cancer specialists – before major decisions, such as mastectomies, are made.

There was little evidence the trust’s breast unit was contributing to MDTs, and decisions about patients’ cases were being made based on the unchallenged opinion of individual surgeons, according to the RCS report.

Outdated practices at the trust that did not meet guidance on best practice included a high rate of “re-excision” (repeated procedures), low uptake of breast reconstruction immediately after mastectomy, and operations that may have been carried out “too quickly”.