Ian Paterson tells inquest women ‘didn’t need to know’ about unauthorised mastectomy

The jailed breast surgeon Ian Paterson has said he did not tell women if he was going to perform an unauthorised cleavage-sparing mastectomy on them because “it was frightening and they didn’t need to or want to know”.

Giving evidence for the first time at an inquest into the deaths of 62 of his former patients, Paterson said he considered a cleavage-sparing mastectomy to be an “adaptation of a standard operation” that did not require separate consent.

After previously refusing to give evidence in the hearings, Paterson spoke on Thursday at the inquest of Elaine Turbill, who died, aged 63, in 2017 when her cancer returned after undergoing a mastectomy carried out by Paterson in 2005.

The inquest heard that at a recall clinic in 2010, it was recorded that 20% of her breast tissue had been left behind after the operation.

Speaking via video link from prison, where he is serving a 20-year sentence for multiple counts of wounding linked to unnecessary operations he carried out on patients, Paterson said he did not explain the procedure in detail to his patients.

“Most ladies know what a mastectomy is. I never went into great detail, it scares them and I don’t think they hear it, they just hear the word cancer,” he said. “This lady [Turbill] would have been taken into a separate room with a breast care nurse and would have discussed things in more detail.”

He later said: “It was frightening and [patients] didn’t need to or want to know.”

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Source: The Guardian, 31 October 2024