Surgeons cleared of killing patient but accused of negligence

TWO surgeons who were cleared of killing a patient whose only healthy kidney was wrongly removed were yesterday accused at a disciplinary hearing of “abject, needless and inexcusable” negligence.

Leighton Davies QC, for the General Medical Council, said the actions of consultant urologist John Gethin Roberts and medical registrar Mahesh Goel in carrying out an operation on 69-year-old John Graham Reeves fell far below the standard of care to be expected of reasonable and competent surgeons. Korean War veteran Mr Reeves had his good left kidney removed by the two surgeons instead of his chronically diseased right one.

Mr Davies said Mr Goel and Mr Roberts were guilty of serious professional misconduct “because of their thoughtlessness and want of due care”. Their negligence was “so abject, needless and inexcusable” and “so far below the standard of care to be expected” that it went far beyond anything that could ordinarily be covered by compensation.

The GMC’s professional conduct committee heard that the operation on Mr Reeves took place at the Prince Philip Hospital in Llanelli on Monday, January 24, 2000,

Mr Roberts, of Pastoral Way, Sketty, Swansea, oversaw the operation and Mr Goel, who is currently in India and was not present at the hearing, carried out the procedure. Mr Reeves died on March 1 five weeks after the operation, despite two more operations and emergency dialysis. Both surgeons were found not guilty of manslaughter under the judge’s direction at Cardiff Crown Court in South Wales, in June, 2002.

The prosecution’s case collapsed after a key witness, pathologist Dr Andrew Davison, told the court he could not be sure Mr Reeves died as a result of the blunder.

Mr Davies told the hearing that the two doctors had committed a “compound of negligence” which should have been easily avoided.

Mr Roberts admitted all the factual charges against him, apart from disputing whether X-rays he received before the operation were correctly labelled. However, Mr Roberts denies his actions amount to serious professional misconduct. Mr Goel has admitted a number of charges, including having seen Mr Reeves in clinic in July, 1999, where tests showed that the patient’s right kidney was not functioning.

However, Mr Goel also denies serious professional misconduct.

Outlining the events leading up to the blunder, Mr Davies said the removal of the healthy left kidney was a “drastic surgical error” which had been described the day after by Mr Roberts in a written report for an internal inquiry as an error “which was appalling”.

The committee was told that Mr Reeves had left the operating theatre at around noon and had then been taken to the intensive therapy unit of the hospital. The alarm was first raised at 2.30pm when it was noted that Mr Reeves had not produced any urine.

This was when it became apparent that the left kidney had been removed and not the right kidney, Mr Davies told the hearing.