Mesh surgeon fails in bid to stop legal action against trust being made public

A leading colorectal surgeon whose former employer, North Bristol NHS Trust, faces negligence claims from dozens of his ex-patients has failed in his bid to keep legal action he is taking against the trust a secret.

A review by the trust found that 203 women on whom the surgeon Tony Dixon performed pelvic mesh procedures between 2007 and 2017 came to harm. The trust faces legal claims from many of them.

Trust board members were told in May that the trust had notified the 203 women that “although their laparoscopic ventral mesh rectopexy operation was carried out satisfactorily, they should have been offered alternative treatments before proceeding to surgery,” and that those patients were defined as suffering “harm.”

Dixon sued the trust in the High Court to try to stop it releasing two documents to solicitors acting for ex-patients, as part of the disclosure process in litigation. 

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Source: BMJ, 27 July 2022