Inquiry into disgraced Midlands breast surgeon Ian Paterson to report back next month

An inquiry into a disgraced breast surgeon who intentionally wounded his patients will report back next month.

Ian Paterson who worked at hospitals across the Midlands, is serving a 20 year sentence for wounding 10 patients who underwent operations in the private sector.

He was also found to be carrying out a rogue form of mastectomy on the NHS, where patients were left with an increased risk of their breast cancer returning.

An inquiry into how he was allowed to carry out the unnecessary operations was launched at the start of 2018.

It aims to learn lessons from the case and examine how care, safety and trust in the health sector can be improved.

Complaints were raised about Ian Paterson a number of years before he was suspended.

In 2003 and 2007 two doctors working alongside Paterson raised concerns but were ignored.

In December 2013 - more than three years before Paterson stood trial - a report found he had carried out inadequate partial mastectomies on a number of women.

Paterson defended himself claiming he had left behind 'fatty tissue' to give the women a more 'satisfying aesthetic appearance'.

The report also suggested that hospital bosses ignored complaints about Paterson because they 'preferred good news to true news.'

Ian Paterson was found guilty in April 2017 of 17 counts of wounding patients with intent.

Over the course of nearly two decades he made a career out of lying to his private patients, telling them they had cancer when they didn’t, in order to make money from hundreds of unnecessary operations.

He was jailed for 15 years but had his sentence increased to 20 years by the Court of Appeal judges, who found the initial ruling to be unduly lenient.