Birmingham Heartlands Hospital
Bordesley Green East
Birmingham
B9 5SS
Tel: 0121 424 2629
17/03/14
Our reference: FOI 2733
Dear Mr Lewis
Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
In line with your earlier FOIA requests for information to be provided as soon as it is made available please find a partial response below. We will provide further responses as soon as we have the requested information.
The responses to your query are detailed below:
As part of our previous response to your request for information under FOIA we provided some figures for patients who, through the recall process, had been contacted who had received a cleavage sparing mastectomy. Within this response (FOI 2675 Qu1) we stated that ‘there were an additional 69 (patients) where the position remained uncertain as to whether a CSM had or had not occurred...’
In your email on 12th November you referred to the ‘Right to Reply’ response which the Trust provided you with on 8th November. Under question 3 in that document we gave 3 figures the last of which was that ‘379 patients were individuals in whom the clinical impression was of the potential for there to have been excessive breast tissue after the operation, but not confirmed.’
You have asked a number of questions, the responses to which are provided below, with regards to the change in number from ’69 to 379 in the space of ten days’.
We feel it is important to provide some background to the way in which the information has been gathered and which we believe will provide greater clarity as to the potential range of answers to identical questions
The information is complex as it represents a review of practice extending over a period of greater than a decade.
The information has been gathered / represents two large categories
1)A review of all NHS patients believed to have had a mastectomy under the care of Mr Paterson – circa 1079.
2)A recall of the above patients who were still alive 643 and out of these 553 patients attended the recall clinic
Therefore whilst there is overlap in the information gathered from the two sets, they are not necessarily identical.
In our response to Qu1 of FOI 2675 the figure of 69 came from the dataset of information we hold on the 553 patients who were physically seen in clinic as part of the recall process. This number refers to the number of patients where the position remained uncertain as to whether they had had a cleavage sparing mastectomy e.g. following reconstruction surgery
The figure of 379 provided in the ‘Right to Reply’ response was taken from a wider dataset based on the total number of patients who had had a mastectomy performed by Mr Paterson with single invasive primary breast cancer, the total of which was 768. The 379 refers to the subset of this group where it was not known if they had had a cleavage sparing mastectomy or not.
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3) What figure (and when) have the Trust given Sir Ian?
As part of the interview process and his conversations with both the Trust and with WMCIU all of the data available was provided before Sir Ian commenced writing his report.
4) How many of the 379 ‘can’t confirm’ category have had further breast surgery following their recall?
5) How many of the 237 women in the so called cleavage sparing mastectomy category have had further breast surgery following their recall.
To date 74 patients have had surgical intervention to remove residual tissue/deconstruct reconstructed breast
I hope the responses to your questions we have been able to respond to answers your query.
Heart of England is one of the largest Hospital Trusts in England.It includes Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, Solihull Hospital and Community Services, Good Hope Hospital and Birmingham Chest Clinic.
The Trust see and treat more than 1.2 million people every year and has nearly 12,000 staff. Around 250,000 people attend their Hospitals’ emergency departments each year too.
Specialty areas of care include: bone marrow transplants, thoracic surgery, heart and kidney disease, infectious diseases, HIV and AIDS, clinical trials and cystic fibrosis.
In line with the Trust’s commitment to openness and accountability, responses to requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 are now routinely published on the Trust’s website
Please contact the Trust via the Publication Scheme address in the first instance, quoting the above reference, should you feel we have not addressed each aspect of your request to enable us to review our response.
If you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at:
The Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45
Website:
There is no charge for making an appeal.
Yours sincerely
Angela Oakley
Information Governance Consultant