WHEN CONSULTANT surgeon Gavin Denton was suspended for three years on full pay it was obvious there was a serious problem. Colleagues at Macclesfield Hospital had raised the alarm over Mr Denton's professional practice and reported him to the NHS Trust who brought in the General Medical Council to investigate.
Considering the 'investigation' lasted longer than Mr Denton's active employment there was ample time to unearth all the facts, interview all the witnesses and, most importantly, talk to his ex patients and/or their families. In fact there was little point in holding an 'investigation' at all without interviewing those most effected by Mr Denton's conduct.
But far from involving or informing Mr Denton's patients hospital management chose to keep it quiet. So desperate were they to avoid disclosure they paid the surgeon to stay at home for three years hoping press and public attention would fade at which point Mr Denton could simply slip away unnoticed.
Without placing any official complaint or accusation on record it was mysteriously decided Mr Denton should be shipped off to a secret location for a 'heavily monitored' retraining course. How the GMC arrived at this damning conclusion, against what background and with what evidence no-one was willing to say.
Had it not been for some tenacious reporting by the Express neither would it be known that a 'deal' had been struck for Mr Denton to ply his trade elsewhere, preferably somewhere his track record would be completely unknown. It was a high-risk strategy…but not for them. As far as East Cheshire NHS Trust were concerned Mr Denton's future patients (whoever and wherever they might be) had no right to know anything. When it came to risk they and their families could take it all.
In February this year, less than two months after Mr Denton 'resigned' from Macclesfield Hospital, 56-year-old Sylvia Cooper attended Scunthorpe General Hospital for a routine operation to remove scar tissue from her intestines. Her surgeon was a Mr Gavin Denton who had surreptitiously reappeared in Lincolnshire.
Seven days after her 'routine' operation Mrs Cooper was rushed into A&E in agony. Mr Denton, who had recently enjoyed three years fully paid leave, took himself away on holiday leaving a second surgeon to discover a hernia from Mrs Cooper's earlier operation.
On his return Mr Denton took charge of the case and cheerfully assured Mrs Cooper's anxious daughters that their mother was 'recovering'. Nine hours later Sylvia Cooper was dead.
Her devastated daughters, both of whom work within the NHS, became deeply suspicious of Mr Denton and began to do some investigating of their own.
They traced him back to Macclesfield Hospital and are demanding to know why a shamed surgeon whose professional practices had been called into question and who had been suspended for longer than he actually worked was allowed to operate on their mother.
They want to know why East Cheshire NHS Trust were so eager to be party to an agreement that guaranteed the facts of their 'investigation' would never be known.
They want to know what 'evidence' led the GMC to conclude that Mr Denton was in dire need of 'heavily monitored retraining'.
Most of all they want to be told why they and their mother were never informed of Mr Denton's dubious history.
The secrecy and obfuscation employed by Macclesfield Hospital management to 'bury' Denton's case has devastated the Cooper family. Less than eight weeks after East Cheshire NHS Trust finally bade him farewell the surgeon they had 'investigated' for over three years was at the centre of another untimely death.
If anyone within East Cheshire NHS Trust has any conscience, compassion or integrity whatsoever it's time they told the full frank and honest truth. Denton's patients are dying to know.
