The career of disgraced Perth cardiologist Keith Woollard is effectively over after his registration to practice medicine was today banned for five years for a botched operation that led to the death of journalist John Brown in 2005.

Camera Icon John Brown died in a botched heart procedure in 2005. Credit: The Sunday Times

A scathing penalty decision handed down by the State Administrative Tribunal bans Dr Woollard from re-applying to practise medicine for five years.

It is the third time SAT has disciplined Dr Woollard since 2012 and the likely final nail in the coffin of his chequered medical career.

In August, Dr Woollard was found guilty of professional misconduct for making false representations to medical authorities to allow him to perform unsupervised angioplasty surgery and attempting to carry out Mr Brown’s unusually complex procedure when he knew his training was not complete.

He also failed to inform Mr Brown and his family of the possibility of heart bypass surgery as a potentially safer alternative to stenting. He then also failed to administer an adequate dose of anticoagulant during the fatal procedure.

Dr Woollard carried out the surgery unsupervised at the Mount Hospital in December 15, 2005, when he had not yet met accreditation requirements recommended by the Cardiac Society of Australia.

The State Coroner ruled Mr Brown died as a result of a coronary artery tear, caused by a wire used by Dr Woollard during the operation.

At the time, Dr Woollard was a shareholder in a company that received fees and incentives from stent manufacturers for every stent used at the catheterisation lab at Mount Hospital.

In a Medical Board of Australia submission to SAT accepted by the tribunal, lawyer Fiona Stanton wrote the seriousness of Dr Woollard’s misconduct was illustrated by its outcome.

“The consequences of the fraudulent and dishonest conduct in this case were particularly grave,” she said.

“If Dr Woollard had been honest with (medical authorities) when he sought accreditation to perform angioplasty without supervision, it is unlikely that he would have been given temporary accreditation to perform angioplasty at the Mount Hospital.

“It is therefore unlikely that Dr Woollard would have performed angioplasty on Mr Brown without supervision, or at all.”

Perhaps most shockingly, Dr Woollard subsequently went on to cause serious harm to three more patients resulting in further adverse SAT findings in 2012 and 2013.

In 2012 the tribunal found that Dr Woollard overinflated an angioplasty balloon while it was inside a patient’s coronary artery. The balloon burst and then broke apart when Dr Woollard attempted to retract it, causing the patient to require open coronary surgery.

He was also found to have given false evidence to the tribunal about the extent to which he inflated the balloon and was fined $20,000 and issued with a reprimand.

The following year he was hauled before SAT again, this time for performing an unnecessary angioplasty procedure on one patient – leaving them with a serious health condition – and causing heart failure in another patient following another botched surgery.

In that case he was fined $75,000 and banned from performing angiograms and angioplasty procedures for five years.

Dr Woollard, the husband of former State MP Janet Woollard, continued to work as a cardiologist in the wake of those incidents until September this year, when he took steps to wind down his practice after the most recent finding of professional misconduct.

He surrendered his registration with effect from today and has been ordered to pay the Medical Board’s legal costs.