'We've lost control' said clinicians after operation on one of UK's top doctor's was botched

A key clinician treating ‘one of the most knowledgeable and best doctors that the UK had’ feared his patient was ‘dying’ as the medical team scrambled to investigate what was wrong with him.

Professor Amit Patel was the first person in the country to be qualified in stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy, and intensive care medicine, and was leading cutting edge medicine at the world-renowned Christie Cancer Hospital. He was also a national expert in the rare, life-threatening condition from which he started suffering major symptoms as he was admitted to Wythenshawe Hospital in August 2021.

The father-of-two’s condition continued to deteriorate and doctors – including Professor Patel himself – made a ‘working diagnosis’ that he might have been suffering from Still’s disease, an inflammatory illness, which was causing a potentially deadly immune reaction called HLH. But one Wythenshawe Hospital doctor who treated the expert said they had never treated anyone with the condition previously, amid a background of other clinicians telling the family that ‘they had never heard’ of the illness and ‘would read about it’ as Professor Patel was becoming gravely ill.

The hospital stay led to Professor Patel's horrific death after a botched procedure.

READ MORE: One of UK's best doctors died from a condition he was an expert in as he lay on understaffed hospital ward

The inquest into Professor Patel’s premature death at just 43 began at Manchester Coroner’s Court yesterday (April 4). Dr Simon Watts, a haematologist who treated Prof Patel, told the hearing that while he had heard of HLH, he had never previously treated anyone with the condition.

During evidence heard on the inquest’s second day (April 5), the haematologist