“Incompetent” surgeon struck off

A surgeon, who was said to lack the competence of a newly-qualified doctor, has been struck off the medical register.

Puvaneswary Markandoo was said to be behind failings at Guy’s Hospital in London which led to the deaths of two notable women; Observer journalist Ruth Picardie and Beth Wagstaff, a woman who co-founded a trust in honour of Picardie, but who also died from breast cancer two years later.

The General Medical Council (GMC) heard that there had been 30 complaints about Markandoo during her time at Barnsley Hospital and the local NHS trust had paid out almost £700,000 in compensation to women who had been left with scarring and infections as a result of the surgeon’s breast surgery.

She was employed at Guy’s before her time in South Yorkshire and lawyers for Picardie and Wagstaff successfully sued the local NHS trust for medical negligence, though the surgeon left before the case was settled. The GMC panel, in striking her off the register, said that there had been fundamental failings in basic clinical medicine which were irremediable and which made her a danger to patients.

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