Robotic surgery is causing patients' deaths, a leading surgeon has warned as he says he would opt for an operation by human hand.

Prof Stephen Westaby warned against the use of robotics after the death of a music teacher who underwent such a procedure.

This week a coroner warned of a risk of further deaths among patients undergoing robotic surgery, calling for national guidance to ensure operations were better supervised.

Stephen Pettitt, 69, died after an operation led by Sukumaran Nair at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle in 2015.

Recording a narrative verdict, coroner Karen Dilks said his death came as a “direct consequence of the operation and its complications” suggesting Mr Petitt would almost certainly have survived if he had undergone conventional surgery.

The surgeon had never had any one-to-one training in using the device.

Yesterday Prof Westaby, a heart surgeon at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, said the case was not isolated - and he said he would not undergo such a procedure using a robot in the UK.

“I do know of other robotic cardiac surgery cases that have not hit the headlines yet but were similarly a disaster,” he warned. “So I do think we have to be very very careful about how this new technology and procedures are rolled out.”