‘Below-standard care’ surgeon named — 800 patients to be reviewed

The care of hundreds of NHS patients — many of them children — is being urgently reviewed because concerns about a surgeon at one of England’s leading hospitals.

She is Kuldeep Stohr, a specialist paediatric orthopaedic consultant at Cambridge University Hospitals Trust. Stohr, who spoke of seeing 200 patients a month at Addenbrooke’s Hospital during a 2022 webinar, has been suspended by the trust after an initial review in January identified nine children who had suffered care “below the standard” the trust would expect.

This review was conducted by James Hunter, a surgeon and the national clinical leader for paediatric trauma and orthopaedics at NHS England, who found that the quality of some children’s lives had been affected.

Now the trust has worked with Hunter to identify 800 of Stohr’s patients to be assessed by a team of experts in a new review. Of these, about 560 are children and 140 are adults. Another 100 adults and children who were treated as emergencies at the Cambridge hospital will have their care reviewed.

Many of the cases involving Stohr are linked to osteotomies — a surgical procedure where a bone is cut to reshape or realign bones such as those in the legs. Some families fear the operations were not performed correctly, with some children having to have multiple operations over several years. There are concerns about poor post-surgery follow-up and alleged delays in complications being recognised and treated.

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Source: The Times, 5 April 2025