AN ANAESTHETIST accused of botching his role in an operation later failed an assessment, a General Med-ical Council hearing was told.

Dr Mariyappan Balasubramanian is accused by the GMC of failing to act promptly when a nine-year-old girl suffered blood loss during a September 2004 op-eration at Blackburn Royal Infirmary.

The intervention of another anaesthetist led to her condition being stabilised, the GMC has been told.

Later the doctor, who worked at the Blackburn hospital for nearly 30 years, was placed under supervised practice at Burnley General Hospital.

Robert Kitching, for the GMC, told the hearing Dr Balasubramanian made a number of errors. He gave double the stated dose of morphine to one patient, and, in another case, didn't have the proper anaesthetic drugs to hand, the hearing heard.

The doctor is also said to have mixed the wrong drugs together when preparing to anaes-thetise a third patient.

He mixed up an abdominal hysterect-omy with a vaginal hysterectomy while ass-essing a patient, said Mr Kitching.

One of the doctors completing the assess-ment, Dr Scott Price, has said in evidence that Dr Balasubramanian dem-onstrated a "worrying knowledge" of machine checking, pharmacology and physiology.

Doctors say he was polite and well-mannered, and comp-etently performed pre- operative and airways checks.

But Mr Kitching said one of the main concerns was that "Dr Balasubram-anian did not do what he was asked to do and did not improve on his practice when bad habits were pointed out."

In a statement, Dr Price said Dr Balasubram-anian had a tendency to become confused and couldn't explain his actions to patients.

The doctors carrying out the Burnley ass-essment said he had demonstrated no insight into his failings and would need full retraining before it was safe to allow him to return to work, the hearing was told.

Dr Balasubramanian's counsel, David Morris, suggested that his client was not qualified enough, as an assistant clinician grade, to under-take the girl's operation.

But the doctor denies of incompetence. The GMC fitness to practise hearing, in Manchester, continues.