A surgeon in the U.K. botched operations on nearly 100 patients, leaving them in constant pain and disability for years, even after multiple corrective surgeries. In many cases, the debilitating pain was misdiagnosed as a neurological disorder, failing to recognize that it stemmed from an incorrect procedure, a recent report revealed.
Mian Munawar Shah, an orthopedic surgeon based in West Midlands, England, was suspended in 2021, two years after officials determined that he had performed a wrong-site surgery known as a “Never Event.”
A recent report reviewed 382 patients he operated on while working for the NHS (public health system in the U.K.) between 2010 and 2020 and found that 91 of them suffered “moderate to severe harm” from incorrect procedures.
More than half of the patients who underwent hand and wrist surgeries suffered botched procedures, including the removal of the wrong bone or improper fusion. In one case, a patient endured four corrective surgeries but was still left with permanent pain and disability.
The report also mentioned that in many cases, the patient’s pain was misdiagnosed and dismissed as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) instead of identifying that it was from surgical mistakes. CRPS is condition that causes chronic pain, often affecting an arm or a leg. Typically triggered by an injury, surgery, stroke, or heart attack, CRPS leads to pain that is far out of proportion to the severity of the initial event. Shah was also found to have undertaken more complex upper limb procedures without competence.
Recognizing the severity of the surgeon’s mistakes, Joanne Chadwick-Bell, Chief Executive of Walsall NHS Trust, where Shah worked, issued an apology: “I want to unreservedly apologize for the 91 patients who have undergone treatment with us, where we haven’t given them the outcomes we expect. I also want to recognize that those patients who didn’t get the care they deserved. It would have been distressing them to have to relive some of those experiences”.
Bell also reassured that systems are now in place to ensure such incidents will not be repeated within their medical system. “So should any surgeon want to undertake new procedures, where perhaps they are new to the trust or new to the doctor, they need to go through a number of additional checks for us to be assured of their level of competence,” she added.
