A disgraced breast surgeon told the inquest into the death of one of his patients that it would be “madness” to leave breast tissue behind during a mastectomy.

Ian Paterson was jailed for 20 years in 2017 for injuring 10 patients by carrying out an unauthorized procedure in which tissue was left behind.

The new investigation is examining the deaths of 62 patients, including 63-year-old Ellen Turbill in 2017, 12 years after Patterson had a mastectomy.

Giving evidence away from prison, he claimed that it was not him who coined the term “cleavage-sparing mastectomy” and said that it was the phrase that “caused hysteria”.

Speaking in general terms, he told the inquiry that the aim of breast surgeons when performing a mastectomy was to remove all the breast tissue, but in practice this was never 100% successful.

He said it’s possible to leave a thicker flap in some patients, but that doesn’t mean leaving breast tissue behind.

The inquest heard that another surgeon, Andrew Stockdale, had raised concerns about the amount of residual tissue left in mastectomy operations carried out at the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, where both worked.

Paterson said he was aware his colleagues were gathering evidence of this, but the matter was not raised at multidisciplinary team meetings, which brought together NHS colleagues to discuss a patient’s treatment .

Paterson also spoke about the delay in receiving biopsy results for Ms Turbill, which he said was due to a lack of trained staff and staff furloughs.

One of her colleagues, radiologist Dr Chris Fletcher, told the inquest on Wednesday that working with breast surgeons was a “nightmare” and that multidisciplinary meetings were “always difficult” because Paterson was “always trying to run her own business”.

The inquiry is ongoing.

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