Surgeon is investigated over deaths

Cases involving nearly 20 patients treated by John Wilden, going back more than 10 years, have been referred to the doctors' watchdog body.

This week GMC investigators interviewed the elderly mother of Deborah Hendry, who died in the Southern General Hospital in 1991, at the age of 40, after a brain haemorrhage resulting from a ruptured aneurysm.

Three years earlier Mr Wilden had operated on her to clip another aneurysm - a swollen weak spot in an artery - and found the second one. But he did not tell her, her family, or her GP.

After a fatal accident inquiry Sheriff Susan Raeburn said that if any of them had been informed - and the symptoms Ms Hendry suffered in the days prior to her death recognised - her life might have been saved.

By then Mr Wilden had left the Southern's Institute for Neurological Sciences, where he had been a consultant from 1986-1989. He was suspended following a clinical audit of his performance and after a private tribunal held by Greater Glasgow Health Board he was paid a six-figure sum to leave the city.

He went on to pursue an academic post at the Royal London Hospital, but in 1995 he appeared as a locum at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, where he operated on Tracy Shaw-Brown, 22. For 12 years she had suffered from a benign brain tumour, which was regarded as inoperable because of its proximity to the brain stem.

She was able to live a near-normal life, and was engaged to be married, but from time to time required surgery to drain fluid from the affected area. Her family were raising money to send her to one of the world's leading specialists in the field in the hope that he could remove the tumour.

Her mother, Wendy, expected Mr Wilden to drain fluid, but he emerged from theatre after seven hours and announced that he had cut the tumour out. Tracy suffered a series of fits, never regained consciousness, and died after a seven-week battle by Mr Wilden's colleagues to save her life.

Mr Wilden's contract was terminated three weeks after the operation following a row with colleagues over her after-care. He later told an inquest that he had told the family he would be carrying out major surgery in a radical resection. They deny this.

The hospital referred the case to the GMC, who did not pursue it because they did not consider it raised an issue of serious professional misconduct.

After five years, following further information about other cases - including Deborah Hendry's - it has decided to reconsider this.

Although the council would not discuss the case at this stage, it is understood it has studied information concerning nearly20 other cases. It considered that many did not raise any particular cause for concern, but is investigating three which may go forward to a public hearing.

Ms Hendry's widowed mother Jean, 77, said at her home in Glasgow last night: ''I spoke to the gentleman from the GMC for two hours and went back over everything that happened. I was told I may have to go to London to testify.

''I am not looking forward to that but I am determined to see this through to the end for Deborah's sake. She would have been the first to fight all the way if it had happened to someone else.''

Ms Hendry's daughter Laura Duke, who was 15 when her mother died, is now married to a TV sports producer and lives in Hove with her husband and two daughters, Gabriella, two, and Stefania, eight months. She has also been interviewed by the GMC.

''It is about time something happened. I always feared that what happened to us might happen to others,'' she said.

''My mum never lived to see me get married or see her grand-children. It is very sad, very difficult to accept.

''I remember clearly when she died. When she collapsed a second time we were shocked to be asked if we had been expecting it. From the first time she had been ill, in 1987, she was reassured by Wilden. We had been told - guaranteed - it could not happen again. Our GP knew nothing about the second aneurysm.''

Mr Wilden told the fatal accident inquiry that he thought Ms Hendry would not have wanted to undergo a second operation, so he did not burden her with the knowledge of the second aneurysm. He did not tell her family because ''they would have told her,'' and he did not tell the GP in case he blurted it out.

The GMC is also expected to interview Douglas Gentleman, a consultant neurosurgeon who was a senior registrar at the institute when Mr Wilden worked there.

Mr Wilden, who graduated in London in 1974 and worked in Oxford and Southampton before Glasgow, is still free to practice. He is registered with the GMC at an address in Harley Street which accommodates a number of practice premises and residential flats.

A receptionist at one of the clinics said: ''He lived in one of the flats but left a few years ago.''

His place of work is still listed in the medical directory as the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. A member of staff there said: ''He left before I started and that was seven years ago.''