A vascular surgeon has been suspended for 12 months by the General Medical Council after botching operations that led to one patient bleeding to death and another being left to breathe through a tube for life. Nayef El-Barghouty, formerly a consultant at Scarborough Hospital in Yorkshire, was found to have made serious clinical errors and lied to an inquest.
The GMC panel heard that Barghouty severed the vena cava of 82-year-old Wilfrid Taylor during a third operation to rectify earlier mistakes, causing him to bleed to death on the operating table in January 2009. The surgeon had previously tied off an artery and left a swab inside Mr Taylor's leg. He also lied to the inquest into the death.
In a separate case in January 2008, Barghouty was found to have rushed a routine thyroid removal on 42-year-old Joanne Roche, cutting through both of her vocal cords. She required a tracheotomy and had to learn to speak again. The panel noted that he had performed only seven such operations since 2004, with two resulting in damage to vocal cords.
The failures come amid revelations that Scarborough Hospital had the highest death rates for elective abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) operations in the UK between 2006 and 2008, with a mortality rate of 29% compared to the national average of 4%. The trust stopped offering the operation after the data came to light.
Simon Wilson, a medical negligence expert representing the families, said the errors were 'woeful' and called for patient access to individual surgeons' records and complication rates. Jo Roche said she would have refused surgery with Barghouty had she known his limited experience.
