A gynaecologist who carried out unneeded hysterectomies without his patients' consent was today waiting to find out if he would be struck off.

Dr Michael Pembrey was found guilty of performing the unnecessary operations and other procedures on seven women between November 1989 and September 1999, while a consultant at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings.

The General Medical Council's professional conduct committee was due to decide today whether he was guilty of serious professional misconduct.

The tribunal has heard previously how he sterilised two women - an 18-year-old with severe learning difficulties and a 25-year-old with Down's syndrome - without proper consent or authority.

He also ruined a 27-year-old woman's chances of a family after carrying out an unnecessary hysterectomy when she was admitted to him with a history of recurrent pelvic inflammatory disease in 1989.

On a 45-year-old mother of three he carried out a hysterectomy without her proper consent.

She had claimed that Dr Pembrey suggested her womb was "a bloody nuisance flapping around inside you", but the GMC ruled these comments were not proven.

The doctor, 56, from Battle, was also found to have incompetently inserted a coil so that it was lost inside the patient's womb and she needed a hysterectomy.

In other instances, a 27-year-old woman suffered an ectopic pregnancy after Dr Pembrey failed to sterilise her properly in May 1995.

In May 1999, a patient suffering from heavy periods was given a hysterectomy but found that her cervix, ovaries and fallopian tubes had been removed as well without her consent.

Dr Pembrey has been suspended on full pay since September 1999. He denies serious professional misconduct.

Claims that he performed an unnecessary extensive examination of a woman's cervix were found not to be proven at the GMC yesterday.

Allegations of serious professional misconduct after a woman's thigh was burnt during a uterus examination in 1995 were dismissed.