Treatment concerns raised over NI surgeon

A top orthopaedic surgeon could face disciplinary action over claims that blood cells taken from fracture patients in the North were used for research without proper procedures being in place, it was revealed today.

Professor David Marsh, who once worked as a consultant at the Royal Victoria and Musgrave Park Hospitals in Belfast, has been reported to the UK's General Medical Council.

The GMC was alerted when the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust decided to recall 30 fracture patients for precautionary blood tests because of concerns about the handling procedures in a laboratory involved in their treatment.

The review of the patients is expected to be completed by next week at the latest.

The GMC will be informed of the outcome and will then decide if the surgeon, who was also Professor of Orthopaedics at Queen’s University, Belfast, should face action. He no longer works for the Belfast Trust and has left Northern Ireland.

The patients received a new treatment aimed at helping to make their bones mend. It involved removing cells from their bone marrow, growing them in a laboratory and re-injecting them into the site of the fracture six weeks later.

But the way the cells were grown in the laboratory between 1999 and 2004 may have exposed the patients to a low risk infection. According to the trust, some of the cells may have been used for research into how cells work without recorded consent.

It is understood at least three of the 30 men and women patients, whose ages range between the 20s and 70s, did not give written permission for research.

Investigations into the affair, which involved Queens and the Department of Health and Social Services research and development office in the North, took several months to complete.

Dr Tony Stevens, Belfast Trust medical director, said today: “Even though the risk of infection is extremely low, we have asked the 30 people to contact us for a check-up involving a blood test and x-ray.”