The Wisheart affair: responses to Dunn The Bristol cardiac disaster Editor's response to Stephen Bolsin A patient's perspective

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# The Bristol cardiac disaster {#article-title-2} I wish to express my disappointment and concern at the publication of Peter Dunn's article.1 The article raises several important points, which need to be addressed, and I feel that my knowledge and position in Bristol at the time give me some authority to comment. Dunn asks, “Why were the surgeons judged only on a small selected fraction (4%) of their paediatric surgical workload during 1990-5?” I find his answer less satisfactory than the alternative explanation that the United Bristol Healthcare Trust only provided to the GMC's disciplinary committee the details of the operations that it had requested at such short notice that the GMC was unable to deal with anything other than the operations for atrioventricular canal and arterial switch. Even in these limited cases the excess mortality for these two operations was sufficient for the disciplinary committee to reach its verdict. However, we now learn that there were other operations with equally bad records for mortality. On 27 …