A DISGRACED surgeon faces jail after admitting he killed a 71-year-old woman during a botched operation.
Steven Walker, 47, unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty yesterday during the fifth week of his Old Bailey trial for manslaughter. He had been due to enter the witness box to defend himself yesterday.
Judge Sir Stephen Mitchell remanded him on bail for sentencing next Wednesday and said: “There is no indication whatsoever of there being a non-custodial sentence.”
The change of plea followed legal rulings made by the judge on Wednesday. Sir Stephen said Walker had pleaded guilty on the basis that “a difficult operation became an even more hazardous one” when he decided to continue removing a liver tumour after finding that it was larger than he expected.
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Walker, of Camberley, Surrey, had denied the manslaughter of Dorothy McPhee, 71, at the Blackpool Victoria Hospital in 1995.
He had also denied the manslaughter of Jean Robinson, 66, after an operation in the same year, stealing a hospital log and perverting justice.
Rebecca Poulet QC, for the prosecution, said it had been decided that it was not in the public interest to continue and the charges would lie on file.
A similar decision had been made about a second trial alleging manslaughter of another patient, Margaret Wilson, 63, in 1998.
The jury had not been told that Walker had already been found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council after a series of botched operations that left four women dead and others maimed.
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Mrs McPhee died after a risky operation to remove a large cancerous tumour from her liver.
She lost 36 pints of blood after the operation which, the court was told, should not have been performed by him.
Helen Matheson, a consultant anaesthetist, told the court: “The haemorrhage can only be called torrential.
“Three of us were working full-out to get blood into her. It was a very sudden dramatic event. We could not keep up with the blood loss.”
The court was told that Walker turned his back on Mrs McPhee as she bled on the operating table to have his photograph taken with the dissected liver.
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Mrs Robinson, also from the Blackpool area, was given an emergency operation after a colonoscopy procedure produced a tear in 1995.
She died three weeks later after a second operation to reduce an infection and during which the doctor decided to remove most of her bowel.
The trial heard evidence from medical experts who said that Walker should not have attempted the procedures.
Ms Poulet said: “His standard of care fell so far short of what could be expected of a reasonably competent surgeon of Walker’s level of training and experience that it makes him criminally liable.”
The GMC was told that 16 anaesthetists at the hospital refused to work with Walker.