The father of a girl who has been found to have suffered harm at the hands of Great Ormond Street Hospital surgeon Yaser Jabbar says he was ‘clearly working to his own agenda’ and should have been stopped sooner.
Dean Stalham’s daughter Bunty was born with a rare bone disease which caused her left tibia to be bowed and short, and with a genetic condition which also causes tumors to grow on her nerves.
From the age of six, she underwent a number of surgeries over a 15-month period, performed by Mr Jabbar with the aim of preventing an amputation, including bone grafting, limb lengthening of tibia and the use of frames.
All procedures proved unsuccessful and Bunty finally had a below knee amputation in May 2020.
Now, a review of her treatment by an independent expert from another paediatric hospital carried out after concerns were raised over Mr Jabbar’s practice, has highlighted that it was always going to be a ‘significant challenge’ to heal the bone and that a final outcome of amputation was well recognised.
Great Ormond Street Hospital
The independent report said that with a ‘more critical preoperative assessment’, an amputation would have been carried out sooner in Bunty’s treatment.
It was confirmed the Bunty had suffered harm classed as having ‘limited or likely to limit independence’.
Arrange a call back
No documented evaluation as to whether treatment was ‘in best interests’
The review also highlighted concerns over a lack of documented evaluations as to whether the treatment plan for Bunty was right and ‘in the child’s best interests’, and whether alternatives such as amputation should have been investigated first.
Yaser Jabbar Orthopaedic Surgeon
The report comments on the standard of ‘difficult and complex surgeries’ carried out by Mr Yaser Jabbar, describing his ‘surgical skill and technique’ as satisfactory – something Mr Stalham, 61, says is ‘totally irrelevant’. He said:
To be commenting on how skilled he was at the procedures is ridiculous and totally irrelevant, as the fact of the matter is he was subjecting my daughter to complicated surgeries which had no positive impact on her position.
That is the issue, and from what has come out in the press over the past couple of weeks, that appears to have been the case with many more children.
I was asking questions of this man for a number of years as things just didn’t seem right. He always seemed to be working to his own agenda and he used to sweep into the ward and talk himself up as some sort of miracle man, whilst nothing he did ever improved Bunty’s situation.
I was furious and challenged him on a number of occasions, but he was so dismissive. I complained to the hospital also but that was dismissed too. I was repeatedly told he’d done nothing wrong.
Now, only after this recent Royal College of Surgeons review have I received a letter from Great Ormond Street Hospital saying he caused my daughter harm, and offering their apologies. I think they know a can of worms has been opened.
There’s detail in our report about him not considering other treatment plans for Bunty, and that an amputation should have been considered as a more suitable option earlier.
I also find it strange that it says he wasn’t documenting details as to why the procedures were chosen. To me, when people don’t document things which they know they are supposed to record, it raises serious questions about their working practices.
This should have been spotted much sooner by Great Ormond Street and he should have been stopped from working in this way.
‘As a parent, you feel you have let your child down’
Mr Stalham said his daughter has been left with a limp following the fitting of a lower limb prosthetic, and he feels that he ‘let her down’. He said:
As a parent your heart breaks when you feel that as a parent, you’ve not done enough. I imagine others will be feeling as I do.
I did challenge things, but you always feel you should have done more. Due to the condition her leg was in after the surgeries and the amputation, she was only able to have a very basic prosthetic and, as the bone had been left at an angle, she now has a limp.
The report said she had suffered mild psychological harm due to her treatment, but they don’t sit with her on a night when she’s in floods of tears at how she has been left.
It’s appalling and I won’t stop fighting this until the hospital and the surgeon himself take responsibility for what has gone wrong.
Lawyers representing an increasing number of families
Medical Negligence Solicitor Caroline Murgatroyd, of Hudgell Solicitors, has been instructed to act on behalf of families whose children were treated by Mr Jabbar at the hospital between 2017 and 2022, and also from his time with Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, where Mr Yaser Jabbar worked before joining Great Ormond Street.
She said:
Mr Stalham is rightly upset as, until earlier this month, he had always been told his daughter’s care had been appropriate. Now, following an independent review, he has been told Bunty suffered harm as a result of the procedures she underwent.
This case is very similar to all we are seeing at present in terms of serious questions being asked around Mr Jabbar’s decision-making with regards to the treatment plans he made for his patients, and his decisions to carry out procedures on children, which other experts then reviewed and said brought no benefit at all.
There are obviously a number of concerns with this happening, as essentially very young patients were being put through the trauma of unnecessary surgeries, which of course can lead to delays in undergoing the best and most appropriate course of treatment to improve their situation.
We are being contacted by families on a daily basis who either have concerns over the treatment of their children by Mr Jabbar, or who are have received a letter from Great Ormond Street Hospital to say that their child suffered some level of harm, both physical and psychological, under his care.
In these cases we are seeing consistent themes of procedures being carried out with little or no documented details as to why they were chosen, no evidence of other possible treatments being considered and discussed with other surgeons and families, and children sadly undergoing procedures which proved to be completely ineffective and ultimately led to longer periods of pain and suffering.
We’re now also instructed by parents of children who were treated at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, so the level of concern grows daily.
Report to be shared with families
Families are expected to receive details of the extensive Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) report into the Great Ormond Street paediatric orthopaedics department on Friday, September 27th.
The report was completed in October last year but, until now, has not been shared publicly.
It led to an urgent review of 721 children seen by Mr Jabbar in the department. Of 37 cases that have since been reviewed individually, 22 children have been found to have come to some degree of harm, 13 of them classed as “severe harm” and likely to include lifelong injuries.
The Sunday Times, which has seen the report, said it referred to Mr Jabbar exhibiting “unacceptable and unprofessional behaviour”, including being aggressive and threatening towards staff, adding that his record-keeping was poor, his assessments of children before surgery were unacceptable and he carried out operations for which he had not sought proper consent.
It also said children were subjected to surgery that had no clear benefits or justification.
