American doctor charged in Australian patient deaths pleads not guilty to all charges

US doctor charged in deaths pleads not guilty

BRISBANE, Australia — An American doctor was accused Monday of scheduling unnecessary and dangerous operations that prosecutors said resulted in the deaths of three patients and the serious harm of another.

Indian-born surgeon Jayant Patel pleaded not guilty to three charges of manslaughter and one count of grievous bodily harm in a crowded courtroom at Brisbane Supreme Court. His trial is expected to take four to six weeks and hear testimony from some 90 witnesses.

The trial comes more than 25 years after questions were first raised about Patel’s competency, and five years after a government inquiry found he may have directly contributed to patient deaths.

Patel, 59, has not spoken publicly about the charges, which relate to four patients he treated while working as director of surgery between 2003 and 2005 at a state-run hospital in Bundaberg, a sugar industry town 230 miles (370 kilometers) north of Brisbane in Queensland state. He faces a possible sentence of life in prison if convicted.

The doctor arrived to a media throng about 15 minutes before the start of his trial with his wife, Kishoree, clutching his arm. Flanked by his defense team, he refused to answer questions from dozens of reporters. The case has received massive media attention throughout Australia.

Prosecutors say Patel repeatedly performed surgeries he’d been banned from undertaking in the United States, misdiagnosed patients and used sloppy, antiquated surgical techniques.

Patel is charged with the manslaughter of Mervyn John Morris, James Edward Phillips and Gerry Kemps, and the grievous bodily harm of Ian Rodney Vowles.

In his opening statement, prosecutor Ross Martin said the fact the patients consented to the operations was irrelevant.

“To put it shortly and crudely, one cannot consent to one’s own death or grievous bodily harm,” Martin said.

In 2004, Martin said, Patel failed to stop internal bleeding after operating on the esophagus of 77-year-old Kemps, who later died of blood loss. Despite protests from other doctors, Kemps was taken from the operating room and placed in intensive care while Patel undertook another operation.

In another case the year before, Patel found a benign cyst during a colonoscopy of Vowles, but rather than order a biopsy, Patel removed the man’s bowel, which later proved to be free of cancer.

“It was a useless operation,” Martin said.

Phillips, 46, died after Patel performed throat surgery. “This is very major and dangerous surgery which should not have been done by him or at Bundaberg Base Hospital,” Martin said. “Mr. Phillips never regained consciousness and died two days later.”

Patel’s decision to remove part of 76-year-old Morris’ lower bowel in May 2003 “was the wrong thing to do,” Martin said. Morris died two weeks after the operation.

Beryl Crosby, who runs a support group for those who claimed they were harmed by Patel, was among those at the courthouse.

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this day to begin,” Crosby said outside the courtroom. “It will be justice and some closure.”

Patel has faced complaints about his competency since the early 1980s, when he practiced in the U.S. In 1984, he was fined by New York health officials and placed on probation for three years for failing to examine patients before surgery.

He later worked at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Portland, Oregon. Kaiser banned him from liver and pancreatic surgeries in 1998 after reviewing 79 complaints about Patel. The Oregon Board of Medical Examiners later cited him for “gross or repeated acts of negligence.”