Young father suing NHS Glasgow after hip op aged 33 left him crippled and unable to work

But more than five years on he relies on walking aids to get around the house and uses a wheelchair to go outside.

Mr Dunn previously worked three jobs in the seaside town – as a bartender, in a call centre and in a supermarket – but has had to give up all three due to disability and chronic pain.

The experience has left him addicted to opioid painkillers, and his wife has also had to give up work to become his full-time carer.

He was offered £15,000 by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to settle the case but turned it down, with lawyers advising that he would be entitled to damages of more than £1 million.

However, the case, due to be heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh later this year, has been plunged into crisis after the "no-win no-fee" firm underwriting his costs withdrew funding, leaving him unable to afford his solicitor.

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Mr Dunn, who has a four-year old daughter and 12-year-old stepson with wife Sarah, as well as three sons aged seven, 10 and 16 from previous relationships, now faces the ordeal of representing himself in court.

He said: "Had I been given the correct information in the first place, I wouldn't be in this position now: I wouldn't be looking at a life sentence of pain; I wouldn't be fighting every single day to keep my mental health; my wife would be my wife and not my carer. Her whole life has been turned upside down.

"I've never pushed my daughter in a pram. I've never taken her to the park, never given her a bath, never put her on my shoulders, walked down the street with her, took her into a shop.

"I haven't done anything that a normal parent would do, especially at my age. I should be in my prime.

"My older boys have suffered immensely as I was fine one day and disabled the next. They couldn’t understand it for a while and they still have to be reminded sometimes why I am unable to do all the things I used to do. It breaks my heart.

"My wife and I were not long married and we had lots of plans for things we wanted to do with the kids. My life was destroyed by a procedure that was not needed."

Kevin and wife Sarah, pictured 2013

The problems began when Mr Dunn was on holiday in October 2013 with his wife and stepson and he began feeling pain and tightness in his left hip.

An X-ray on his return home revealed an extra bit of bone at the top of his femur.

He was referred for further scans and ultimately sent to the Western General Hospital in Glasgow in October 2014, where a junior doctor training as an orthopaedics specialist recommended surgery to "shave off" the excess bone. He was not seen by a consultant.

By this point his wife was pregnant and Mr Dunn stressed that he did not want to proceed if the recovery time would be longer than six to eight weeks as his symptoms were mild and did not interfere with his ability to walk or work.

Mr Dunn said: "She said: 'You'll be in and out in two days and back playing football in six weeks'."

He says he was not told that there could be any potential complications, or that his condition – femur acetabular impingement (FAI) syndrome – was a precursor to osteoarthritis.

The surgery took place at Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow in January 2015, but six weeks later Mr Dunn was "still on crutches, still in pain and still on medication".

He said: "When I went for my check-up, there was a man in the waiting room who'd been in at the same time as me for a total hip replacement but he was sitting there with no crutches or anything. He was ship shape. Alarm bells started to ring."

When he asked his consultant why he was not walking, Mr Dunn was shocked to be told that the recovery time was six months. He was also told that there had been a bit of damage to his cartilage during the operation which had been repaired by the surgeon drilling to release bone marrow to rebuild it.

"I wasn't told any of this beforehand," said Mr Dunn.

Kevin now requires a wheelchair when he leaves the house

He went home and carried on with physiotherapy but said it only made his condition worse.

"The more physio I did the more pain I was in," said Mr Dunn. "I was going backwards. The pain was increasing, and my medication was slowly increasing."

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He had started out on the painkiller co-codamol, but was later escalated to oxycodone – an opioid for moderate to severe pain.

He now relies on morphine, pregabalin for neuropathic pain relief, antidepressants, sleeping tablets to relieve insomnia caused by chronic pain, stimulants to help him wake up, and tablets to protect his digestive lining from the drugs.

Six months after his operation he was still on crutches and had been forced to give up work due to pain and immobility.

He was sent for scans and complained to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, but said the responses were "vague or dodged the questions" and stated that his situation "was in keeping with the natural history of your condition".

"That blew my mind. I was like 'what the hell's my condition? I was told I had a little bit of extra bone and I'd be back playing football in six weeks.

"When I asked my consultant what they meant he said I had 'a little bit of osteoarthritis', but it was the first I'd heard.

"I still had no explanation for why I was in pain, why it was getting worse, why I couldn't put weight on it – nothing. Then I heard the term bursitis."

His consultant told him he believed that inflammation of the bursa – fluid-filled sac near the hip joint – was the cause of Mr Dunn's discomfort.

Bursitis can be caused by overuse or excessive pressure on the joint, injury, infection, or an underlying condition such as osteoarthritis.

In 2016, Mr Dunn underwent surgery to investigate and clean the bursa, but his condition deteriorated further.

In despair, Mr Dunn began legal proceedings to sue NHS GGC for damages. The case was taken up by an Edinburgh-based law firm Drummond Miller and funded through a no-win, no-fee claims company.

Last year, NHS GGC offered to make an out-of-court settlement worth £15,000, of which Mr Dunn would receive £12,500 after legal fees.

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He turned it down, partly because the deterioration in his hip means he can no longer undergo a full hip replacement in future.

Mr Dunn said: "Don't get me wrong, £12,500 is a lot of money to me but it is nothing in comparison to what I need to live. I'm crippled for life, the whole family is changed as a result.

“FAI is a precursor to osteoarthritis. A sure sign that the individual will go on to develop osteoarthritis and require a hip replacement.

“So regardless of whether I had the operation or not, I would need a hip replacement later – or at least I would have if they hadn't messed up my left hip so badly. Now it's not even an option anymore.”

Mr Dunn says he has been told by two separate hip specialists – one a private Edinburgh doctor hired by the health board as part of the legal case, and the other a medic at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to whom he was referred for a second opinion on his condition – that they would not have recommended FAI as a first course of treatment.

However, he fears they will not put those conclusions in writing.

Correspondence in December 2019 from the advocate hired by his legal firm states: “If the pursuer [Mr Dunn] had avoided the operation in January 2015 he would not now have chronic, unrelenting pain over his left lateral hip ... this seems to be the main reason for his disability.

“The exact reason for his condition is unclear although an infection at the time of the operation is suspected.

“Clearly the risk of being left with a chronic pain condition (whether due to infection or damage to surrounding structures) is something that he should have been warned about ... I do not know what the pursuer’s pre-accident earnings were but even assuming relatively modest earnings of £20,000 per annum I would broadly value his claim at over £1 million.”

However, the case has been complicated by the question of whether it was reasonable that Mr Dunn was offered the surgery, and whether a majority of the patients in the same position would have also proceeded.

The expert witness hired by Drummond Miller, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, concluded in his report to the law firm that there was no evidence of negligence and that on the basis of physical examinations and scans taken at the time, the decision to recommend hip arthroscopy “was entirely within reason and in keeping with the published literature”.

He referred to research studies available at the time which indicated a complication rate of around 1.5%.

Subsequent studies – reported in 2016 and 2017, after Mr Dunn’s operation – found that around 10-20% of patients had a poor clinical outcome or required further procedures.

However, the expert witness - who cannot be named for legal reasons - stressed that since this still pointed to a “much higher success rate than 51%, it therefore seems more likely than not that Mr Dunn would still have considered/gone ahead with hip arthoscopy surgery”.

The case now hinges on whether Mr Dunn was adequately advised of the risks to give consent.

In his report, the expert witness said it “remains entirely unclear and obscure whether [Mr Dunn was informed] about the possibility and likelihood of failure”, and notes that “at the time of the offer for surgical intervention Mr Dunn enjoyed a relatively normal day-to-day life with no inhibition of his working or walking ability”.

He added that he “can see no evidence to suggest that a further trial of conservative treatment was considered”, but that – due to the osteoarthritis – his condition would have deteriorated anyway over time.

The report contributed to a calculation that Mr Dunn’s case did not meet the required threshold set by his no-win, no-fee claims firm of a more than 50% chance of success, and funding was withdrawn earlier this year.

Mr Dunn remains adamant that he would never have proceeded.

He said: "No one ever said to me 'there is a chance it might not work and you end up worse off', that I could develop chronic pain, or that I’d need hip replacement anyway in future anyway from osteoarthritis.

“If they had said that one sentence to me at the start, then the whole thing would have gone in a completely different direction. I was fine, I’d have waited.

“But it’ll come down to the judge’s decision."

A spokeswoman for NHS GGC said: "There is an ongoing legal claim and it would be inappropriate for us to make any comment."