PIP implant scandal: Scots urged to join legal battle over implants

Published on Sunday 22 January 2012 00:00

UP TO 80 Scots women are planning to take legal action against private clinics refusing to remove the potentially dangerous breast implants at the centre of an international health scare.

The women, fitted with French-made PIP implants, are to sue the clinics for breach of contract. They want the implants removed and replaced in addition to compensation for their distress.

The Scottish and Westminster governments have urged private clinics to take responsibility for their patients. However, a number of the major clinics, responsible for the majority of PIP implants, claim they would go out of business if forced to remove and replace them. Some smaller private clinics, who operated on fewer women, have offered removal and replacement.

Patrick McGuire, a partner at Thompsons Solicitors in Glasgow, who is spearheading the legal campaign, is appealing for women to come forward to join the 80 others planning legal action. He intends to initiate a test case under the Sale of Goods Act 1979, arguing that implant recipients have the same rights as consumers buying items such as cars or televisions.

McGuire said: “We would appeal for any woman with these implants not to suffer in silence. There is absolutely no need to be ashamed. It strikes me as entirely inappropriate the way some people have turned this into a moral issue, saying it gets down to vanity. These women have been badly let down.

“We are hearing horror stories about how women feel they have a ‘ticking time bomb’ inside them. These implants can have an incredibly significant impact on their bodies.”

He claimed that some clinics had raised prices for women seeking reassuring scans.

“Private clinics even appear to have put prices for scans up, which can only be described as profiteering,” he said. “Until this situation emerged, a scan cost around £50. Now some are up to £300.”

McGuire wants the main clinics – such as the Harley Medical Group, Transform and the Hospital Group – to remove and replace the implants, depending on individual women’s wishes, and pay compensation to reflect the upset.

“I take with a pinch of salt claims by private clinics that they would go out of business if forced to remove and replace the implants,” he added. “They were quick enough to take the money in the first place.

“My message to these clinics is: don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. You fail to take action at your peril. Act now or action will be taken against you.”

More than 50,000 women across the UK have PIP implants, including around 4,000 in Scotland. Around 95 per cent of the procedures were carried out privately, and no NHS cases have been identified in Scotland. The implants were made by the now-closed French company Poly Implant Prothèse.

One of the women involved is Jenny Brown, 40, who was on an NHS waiting list for breast implants but decided to speed up the process by paying £3,500 to have the operation done privately through Transform in 2005.

Brown, 40, a nurse from Edinburgh, said a recent appointment with Transform had not calmed her fears.

“I had to contact Transform myself, and had an appointment with them last Sunday to try to get some reassurance. The appointment lasted 20 minutes and it was just a quick prod and poke.

“They told me if I wanted a scan I’d have to pay about £100 for it. It would also cost £2,650 to have them removed.

“I put forward to them that another private hospital in Edinburgh was calling in its patients and removing and replacing implants for free. But the surgical co-ordinator said to me ‘Oh, they only have a few hundred odd cases. We have thousands, we could be bankrupt if we did that’. I felt very angry and sick when I came away from the appointment.”

Nigel Robertson, the chief executive officer of Transform, said: “The removal of PIP implants is a dynamic and complicated issue.

“We continue to review our position and are persisting in our efforts to secure a meeting with the Department of Health in order to seek a workable resolution that is in the best interests of all patients, not just those with ruptures.

“Transform has not routinely used PIP implants in breast augmentation procedures since 2005.”

» [e-mail]