Patrick John Whitfield was born on 7 November 1931, the son of Albert Victor Whitfield and his wife Rose Anna née Maye. He studied medicine at St George’s Hospital Medical Centre in London and graduated MB, BS in 1958. Until 1965 he carried out junior hospital appointments in the UK and in Arkansas, USA, and in 1966 was appointed senior registrar to the Oxford Hospitals for a year. He then moved to Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton where he was senior registrar from 1967 to 1972 and also worked at Mpumalanga Hospital in South Africa. Appointed consultant plastic surgeon at Queen Mary’s in 1972, he stayed until 1995. In April 1981 he carried out a procedure on the famous jockey Lester Piggot, replacing part of his ear which had been torn off in a racing accident at Epsom. From 1996 he was a consultant plastic surgeon at the Westminster Hospital, London. He married Doris Eileen née Humphries on 23 July 1955 and they had two daughters, Natalie Anne and Roseanne Louise. A member of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons and the Atheneum, he was also a fellow and past president of the section of plastic surgery of the Royal Society of Medicine. He died on 19 February 2019 aged 87.