Kuldeep Stohr and the Addenbrooke's surgery review

Summary

• Kuldeep Stohr is a consultant surgeon who operated on children's bones and joints at Addenbrooke's Hospital, run by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Much of the work was complex hip surgery, planned in advance to improve a child's quality of life.
• Families want to know how many of her patients came to harm, and why the hospital let her keep operating after an outside expert had found problems with her surgery.
• In December 2015 the only other consultant in the service raised formal concerns. An outside surgeon reviewed ten of her cases and confirmed problems with her technique and judgement. Managers read his report as a clash between two colleagues, so she carried on with no restrictions or extra supervision.
• She went on leave in March 2024, and the surgeons who took over her patients were worried by what they saw. An outside expert confirmed concerns, and the trust suspended her in February 2025 and began checking the care of about 1,000 of her patients.
• Verita, an investigations firm, found 32 missed opportunities to act between 2012 and 2024. The trust accepted its findings in full.
• In September 2026 the trust published interim figures by mistake. Of 924 completed reviews, 209 patients had come to harm: 53 low, 108 moderate and 47 severe, and in one child the harm was fatal. The review, led by the barrister Andrew Kennedy KC, is due to report later in 2026.

Dig deeper

• Verita also heard her side. She said she had no line manager in her first consultant job and was pressed to take on a colleague's waiting list. Occupational health cited work related stress in 2015 and 2024, but the trust made no adjustments to her workload.
  • She told investigators: "If anything, the organisation put more and more work at my door."
  • Verita found she tried to improve her surgery after 2016 "without the help and support of the Trust".
• The 2016 warning reached very few people. Verita found no record that the harmed patients in that review were logged as incidents or that their families were told. The colleague who first spoke up stopped raising concerns, believing she had been cleared and fearing sanctions if the matter was reopened.
• Jack Moate was nine when she operated on his hips in September 2015, and he died two months later. In February 2026 the trust told his mother an expert had found evidence "that fatal physical harm was caused", meaning his care may have played a part. A coroner is investigating and has not yet reported.
• On 4 June 2026 a health minister told MPs the regulator is investigating her conduct. It has made no finding against her. Since September 2025 she has worked under interim conditions that stop her doing certain hip operations without direct supervision.
• The trust did not formally warn the Nuffield Hospital in Cambridge, where she also operated privately, and Verita counted that silence in early 2025 as a missed opportunity. The Nuffield works on the principle that "no news is good news", and its staff told Verita they had nothing on file about her.
• Great Ormond Street Hospital in London recalled the patients of another children's bone surgeon, Yaser Jabbar, and found 94 of 789 harmed by his care in January 2026. In the Lucy Letby case, consultants who warned about the nurse were told to apologise to her.

Ethical issues

Interview questions

• What do you know about the Kuldeep Stohr case?
• What did the Verita report find, and why was the 2016 review not acted on?
• You are a junior doctor and notice that a consultant's patients often need further operations. What do you do?
• Was this the failure of one surgeon or of the hospital, and what is the case for each?
• A parent asks you whether concerns have ever been raised about the surgeon due to operate on their child. What do you tell them?
• How can a hospital tell whether a surgeon is safe when few others in the building do the same operations?
• Is a statutory public inquiry needed here, or are independent reviews enough?
• How should the NHS support a doctor who is struggling without putting patients at risk?