A doctor who previously lied about his age has admitted gross negligence manslaughter following the death of a woman in a botched routine procedure at a Greater Manchester hospital.
Despite objections from the patient and her husband, 85-year-old Dr Isyaka Mamman attempted the “highly dangerous” procedure of taking a bone marrow sample from the woman’s sternum, after failing to obtain a sample from her hip in his first attempt.
But he used the wrong biopsy needle, missed the bone and pierced her pericardium, the sac containing the heart, causing massive internal bleeding, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Shahida Parveen, 48, a of three, lost consciousness as soon as the needle was inserted, with her husband running from the room shouting: “He killed her. I told him to stop three times and he did not listen. He killed her.”
Having gone to the Royal Oldham Hospital for investigations into possible myeloproliferative disorder on 3 September 2018, the woman was pronounced dead later that day.
Mamman, of Cumberland Drive in Royton, will be sentenced on Tuesday after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing to gross negligence manslaughter.
He was told by the judge to “prepare” himself to spend time in jail.
Medical watchdogs had already suspended Mamman for a year in 2004 for lying about his age and he had previously left a job with the Medway Trust in Kent because of “poor performance”. But he was re-employed by the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust in 2006, where he faced criticism over multiple incidents involving bone marrow biopsies prior to the fatal appointment in 2018, the court heard.
In 2015 a formal complaint was made to the Oldham hospital when a patient complained he used “excessive force” during a bone marrow biopsy.
The patient was told that Mamman was in his 70s and his colleagues thought he should retire but they could not dismiss him purely because of his age. She was assured he would be put on light duties in future.
However, the same year there was another clinical incident which resulted in serious injury to another patient, again during a bone marrow biopsy, and again involving a needle being inserted in the wrong place.
The patient survived but has been left permanently disabled.
Michael Hayton, mitigating, said it was clear Mamman – who was working as a specialty doctor in haematology – was a “failing” doctor and should not have been allowed to continue treating patients, adding: “He is not the only person at fault. He should not have been allowed to be in the position he was. There’s a grotesque catalogue of failings by the trust from 2015.”
Mamman qualified as a doctor in Nigeria in 1965 and had worked in the UK since 1991. From 2006 until the time of the fatal incident he was employed by the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.
But his “true age” is a matter of “controversy”, the court heard, as his birthplace in rural Nigeria has no system of birth registration.
During his medical training he gave a date of birth of 16 September 1936, which meant that he was 21 years old when he began his medical training and 81 at the time of the fatal hospital incident.
But he knocked years off his age by adopting a birth date in 1941, provided to the NHS, suggesting he began his medical degree at the age of 16.
However, in about 2001 and approaching what was then the compulsory retirement age of 65, Mamman adopted an even later birth date – October 1947 – which he relied upon in an application for naturalisation as a British citizen. That birthdate would have meant that he started his degree course at the age of 10.
In 2004 he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council (GMC) and suspended for 12 months for lying about his age.
The Pennine Trust sacked him but then re-employed him in 2006, after he had been restored to the register by the GMC, who accepted his date of birth to be 1943 – which meant he was 14 or 15 when he began his medical degree.
The sentencing hearing was adjourned until Tuesday morning.
Additional reporting by PA
