Review clears Brompton surgeons

A review of the surgical outcomes at the Royal Brompton Hospital has cleared the hospital over allegations of excessive mortality in children undergoing cardiac surgery.

The independent review of paediatric surgery, comprising paediatric consultant cardiologists Dr Stewart Hunter and Dr Michael Godman and consultant cardiac surgeon Mr James Monro, studied operative data from 1987 to 1999 and found that “the Brompton results are similar to, and in most cases better than, the results from the UK register.”

The data, sent by an anonymous whistleblower to Private Eye magazine, were “incomprehensible, incomplete, and misleading.” Private Eye, which did not publish the allegations, passed the data, in confidence, to Mark Taylor, chief executive of the Brompton …