Surgeon with ‘complete freedom’ harmed dozens of patients

An orthopaedic surgeon with “almost complete clinical freedom” is likely to have harmed nearly 100 patients, a long-running investigation has found.

The review examined 382 elective complex upper limb procedures at Walsall Healthcare Trust in the West Midlands. It found treatment was “sufficiently sub-optimal to have caused moderate or serious harm” in 24% of cases.

As well as the surgeon who carried out the procedures being “apparently not fully competent to perform” them, there was a lack of robust oversight and poor coding, and notes which made it difficult to establish what had happened.

The cases studied involved “procedures of concern”, meaning the rate of harm among other all patients operated on by the surgeon is likely to be lower.

Surgeon Mian Munawar Shah was stopped from carrying out some operations after concerns were raised about his work in 2020 and was later suspended from patient-facing work. He also worked at a nearby private hospital, Spire Little Aston, but work there is not covered by the reviews published today.

After two external reviews, the trust decided to notify and recall patients who had undergone complex upper limb surgery done by him. Some hand and wrist surgery was also examined and found to involve poor or very poor care, including cases where the wrong bone was removed.

The final reviews were completed in September, and findings have been published by the Trust.

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Source: HSJ, 11 March 2025