NHS says Sir Magdi is too old to operate

THE WORLD'S leading heart surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub has been forced by NHS bureaucracy to give up performing transplants.

Sir Magdi, who was 66 on Saturday, has fallen foul of an NHS rule that says a surgeon can work beyond that age only at the discretion of his NHS trust.

Although Sir Magdi is regarded as still at his peak by colleagues at Harefield Hospital near Uxbridge, the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust has decided not to allow him to operate on NHS premises any longer.

Chief executive Mark Taylor says in a TV documentary tonight: "The trust has an absolute policy. There wasn't a discretion to exercise."

The trust will inevitably be accused of ageism and of wasting the talents of the man who has performed a world-record 1,500 heart and dual heart-and-lung transplants.

In private hospitals, surgeons can operate until they are 70, but private organ transplants are rare. The trust also recently announced the effective closure of Harefield.

Sir Magdi will be allowed to continue research at Harefield, but all the rural hospital's operations are due to be shifted to a giant new hospital being built in Paddington Basin.

Sir Magdi, who once invited his friend Princess Diana into theatre to watch a heart operation on a child, says in the documentary made by LWT: "Maybe one day you do get to feel you're too old to be performing certain things. One has to be conscious of that. But right now I don't feel it. I don't think age is a paramount thing, because in terms of experience, it gives you the edge.

You've seen a lot of things and can act much quicker in response to a change you see but that if you were younger, you would not. It's a subtle thing. So I think there should be guidelines, but maybe rules and very rigid systems are on the whole not very good." He also speaks emotionally about Harefield. "To have such a sophisticated centre in the middle of nowhere is unique and patients love it where it is. The fact that it's in a small village might appear to be a disadvantage, but it's absolutely the opposite.

The population feel very strongly about the hospital. I don't want to use the word magic, but there is something like magic in the place."

Harefield anaesthetist Gavin Wright is more outspoken. He says: "The fact is Magdi is still one of the best surgeons around. He's just a victim of a rule."

Sir Magdi's NHS patients and their relatives, many of whom were desperately waiting for his skills, are angrier still. Jane Everitt says: "It's really stupid that a man of his calibre, expertise and knowledge, all of a sudden can't operate." Mrs Everitt, from East Ham, whose 22-year-old son Scott is waiting for a transplant, adds: "Does he develop shaky hands overnight, or what? It just seems so silly that they're crying out for doctors and nurses and a man with this amount of expertise has got to give up purely because of a birth certificate."

Health Secretary Alan Milburn, who has given Sir Magdi 2.5 million to carry on his research, says on the programme: "We've got to find a better way of ensuring that we can use the expertise of surgeons coming up to retirement, not to work them ever harder but to bring on the next generation, and Magdi would have a huge role to play in that."

Sir Magdi's only operations now are likely to be abroad, for his charity Chain of Hope, which works with children from developing and wartorn countries. But he remains a staunch supporter of the NHS. He said yesterday: "Retiring from the NHS is sad for me because I'm a very, very strong believer in it. If healthcare is looked at as a commodity you just buy from the supermarket, something very, very important is lost.

The NHS typifies the doctor-patient relationship at its best."

Magdi Yacoub - King of Hearts is on the Discovery Channel at 9pm tonight.

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