Birmingham brain op failings made patients’ lives ‘hell’

The failure was initially exposed by a serious incident report into the care of Chris Tyler.

Probes inserted by Mrs White in 2017 and replaced in 2019 led to slurred speech and an inability to function.

Both times, the probes were in the wrong place and the failure was finally put right by further surgery in Oxford.

“There was a culture of failure and a culture of not wanting to take responsibility for what happened and I feel a bit betrayed,” Mr Tyler previously said.

Another patient, Keith Bastable, developed “intolerable side effects” from his surgery in April 2019, including slurred speech and eyesight problems.

Mr Bastable wrote to the trust saying that he had only seen Mrs White twice – the day of the operation and the day that programming of the electrodes started.

It was not until his meeting at the neurosurgery unit in Oxford that he was told that the leads were so far away from the target that they couldn’t work.

“Nobody would tell me what was wrong and Mrs White wouldn’t see me. I went to Oxford and they told me exactly what was wrong,” he said.

“Why didn’t Birmingham tell me?”