Angela Glover was 1 of 91 patients that had been under the care of Mr Mian Munawar Shah, an Orthopaedic Surgeon at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, who have suffered avoidable harm. Angela advised that what she had been through under his care was like “to hell and back”. She had been left with life changing injuries due to the surgeon conducting botched operations to remove the wrong bones.

Angela provides her story of being under the care of Mr Shah for a muscle tear in her shoulder in 2018. She was wrongly advised that she had suffered a shoulder dislocation and an operation would be necessary.

During the operation, he had put metal bolts into her shoulder and chipped away at the bone, as part of a procedure that she did not need in the first place. A scan in 2020 had revealed that he had also bolted her shoulder into the wrong place.

Angela had reported this to the head of Trust and explained that she had been told “[Other medics] said if I’d had physio and no surgery that I would’ve made a full recovery in six months. He’s taken so much away from me.”

Since this operation, Angela has been in constant pain, unable to move her right arm, unable feel her thumb, nerve damage, unable to hold her 13 month old granddaughter and finds everyday tasks almost impossible to do.

Even prior to Angela’s care, there was a concerning number of complaints against Mr Shah; between 2010 and 2018, the Walsall Trust received 21 litigation claims concerning care by Mr Shah and of these, 8 of them were successful, meaning that compensation was paid. He was eventually suspended in 2021 and an internal review was launched by the Trust, followed by an external review involving the Royal College of Surgeons which was commenced in September 2022.

This led to patient notification and recall of patients who had undergone complex upper limb surgery with Mr Shah. This included just short of 400 patients. The final patient case reviews were completed in September 2024 and the report following this, dated 11 March 2025, upholds the concerns in respect of the care Mr Shah provided to patients undergoing complex upper limb procedures and it became apparent that there were concerns relating to his technical competence with procedures such as shoulder and elbow replacement, shoulder stabilisation involving bone graft (the Latarjet procedure) and hand and wrist surgery including bone fusion and bone grants.

The investigation revealed that concerns were identified in 24% of the cases, in which the care was sufficient suboptimal to cause moderate or severe harm to patients. Examples of the type of issues identified are:

• Wrongly identified the issue with which the patients were presenting
• Removed the wrong bone during a wrist surgery – this is known as a ‘never event’, meaning that it is something that should never happen with appropriate care
• Misplacement and/or insertion of the wrong sized screws and/or prothesis during the upper limb operations.

The Trust chief executive, Joe Chadwick-Bell has provided his apologises not only to the patients but to their families stating “We appreciate the review may have been a distressing time for patients and we once again sincerely apologise to those patients who were affected by the surgery Mr Shah carried out”

It is hoped that, by widening the investigation, there will be transparency for all patients of Mr Shah, which would be the first step in them getting the answers and justice that they deserve. The investigation however can only go so far and it will not in itself lead to the payment of compensation to fund much needed medical treatment and support for those who have suffered, such as rehabilitation, aids and equipment, care services and property adaptation. This is where a medical negligence claim can assist.

Our Medical Negligence team have extensive experience in representing both children and adults who have experienced negligent orthopaedic surgery care and have secured substantial sums of compensation to help with their futures.

If you or your child has received treatment from Mr Shah, or indeed any other surgeon, and you feel that the surgery was not conducted to an appropriate standard, please contact our Medical Negligence team on 01482 323697 to discuss how we can help.