A PETERSFIELD man suffered months of agonising pain after a botched hip replacement operation carried out by a private healthcare company brought in to help reduce NHS waiting lists. And now he has joined forces with another patient who suffered similar problems to take legal action against Portsmouth Hospital NHS Trust. John Rutter, 72, of Penns Road, was left with one leg shorter than the other. And he had to favour his replaced hip so much, he wore out the knee in his good leg and also had to undergo a knee replacement. The badly performed hip operation left him so immobile and in such pain that he was unable to return to work in the family farm machinery business for many months. On his first day back at work, he dislocated his hip and was rushed back into hospital by ambulance. Mr Rutter's story is one of half a dozen allegedly botched operations carried out by a South African surgeon who was part of a team brought to the UK by the private healthcare company Netcare. The team worked from the Royal Haslar Hospital at Gosport, carrying out non-urgent operations over a six-month period to March 2004. The team was brought in by Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, which took the action in a bid to cut down its waiting lists. Mr Rutter had been having hip trouble as far back as l999, when after an X-ray, he was told he would eventually need a replacement operation. "As time went on the pain got worse and worse," Mr Rutter told The Herald. "By 2003 I was on the waiting list with the NHS for the operation and they told me I would have it within nine months." "Then I had a letter from Netcare saying they had a team over from South Africa doing these operations and if I wanted an earlier date I could go on their scheme. It seemed too good to be true. My hip was getting bad and it was going to be a few weeks' wait against a nine month wait - I thought I would go for it. " Mr Rutter had the operation on November 14, 2003. "It seemed to go OK, and as far as my treatment went, I could find no fault with the nursing staff at all," he told The Herald. Four days later he was home in Petersfield looking forward to his recovery. "It was difficult to move around and it didn't seem to get any easier," said Mr Rutter. "And other people who had had the same operation as me, seemed to be doing so much better than me." Then, six weeks after his operation, while sitting in the bath, Mr Rutter realised that one leg was shorter than the other. "I saw my GP, who said I was right, and wrote a letter to the consultant asking for this to be checked." But other events took over and Mr Rutter never made that appointment. It was now four months after his operation and Mr Rutter was anxious to return to work. He had been told he could expect to be fit for work within eight weeks of the operation. "On my first day back I dislocated the hip and was unable to move. I was taken by ambulance to Queen Alexandra. "They showed me the X-ray and said the hip replacement was never going to be any good and would have to be replaced. I was told to be very careful as the hip would dislocate again," he said. A month later, in April last year, Mr Rutter had a second hip replacement. But his problems were not over. "I had been getting trouble with my left knee and when it was X-rayed they told me it had worn out. Basically I had been favouring my hip so much, the knee had taken a lot of extra pressure." Two months ago, Mr Rutter had his knee replaced and is finally making a recovery. "I feel a lot better than I have done for a long time," he told The Herald. "I am getting around better and I am now weaning myself off the sticks, and last week I started driving again." Recently he was contacted by Laurence Vick, a solicitor in Exeter who is acting for another Netcare patient who suffered a botched operation. Mr Rutter decided to join forces, and Mr Vick is now acting for both patients. "I have lost the best part of two years of my life," he told The Herald. "I thought that I would be back to normal in a couple of months and it didn't happen." In a statement, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust said: "Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust has received a report of an investigation into hip replacement operations carried out in Hampshire by an independent sector provider. "The investigation was commissioned by Hampshire and the Isle of Wight Strategic Health Authority, following problems with hip replacement surgery. Portsmouth Hospitals contracted this company to perform 1,000 orthopaedic operations on behalf of its own hospitals and those in Frimley Park and Plymouth, between October 2003 and March 2004. All three hospitals have links with the armed forces, and their orthopaedics teams had been severely depleted when reservists were called up in preparation for the Gulf War. Key findings of the report are: For the overwhelming majority of patients the contract between the NHS and Netcare UK worked well. Guidance for similar contracts in the future have been noted with relation to recruitment, contract management, theatre scheduling and clinical governance. Work in the future should recognise and address professional differences that exist between overseas healthcare teams and those prevalent in the NHS. The patients identified as having problems have been offered any treatment that becomes necessary, in a hospital of their choice – either NHS or private facility, conveniently located for them. Some revision operations have already been carried out. Portsmouth Hospitals has worked in partnership with Netcare UK to make the arrangements."