A Hampshire doctor exploited dying patients' when he told them his experimental alternative therapy could help them live longer, a tribunal has found.

Dr Julian Kenyon offered Sono Photo Dynamic Therapy (SPDT), which uses sonar and light, at the Dove Clinic's Wimpole Street consulting rooms, in central London.

After a 20-minute consultation, which cost £300, he told one terminally ill man with late-stage cancer: 'I am not claiming we can cure you, but there is a strong possibility that we would be able to increase your median survival time with the relatively low-risk approaches described here.'

He also made bold statements about the treatment's supposed benefits to an undercover reporter who posed as the husband of a woman with breast cancer.

A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel found Dr Kenyon's statements were 'misleading', but said he had not deliberately misled patients because he genuinely believed in the treatment.

The medic is now facing a ban from the profession after the Fitness to Practise panel, sitting in Manchester, found he had 'brought the profession into disrepute'.

'The panel found that you made highly significant misleading statements to a vulnerable and terminally ill patient and also to someone who you believed at the time to be the husband of another vulnerable patient,' MPTS panel chairman Dr Surendra Kumar told him.

'The panel considers that your conduct in making misleading statements regarding SPDT to vulnerable patients or relatives of vulnerable patients, on two separate occasions, amounted to misconduct which was serious.

'In making the misleading statements on two occasions you failed to give a balanced view of SPDT, you made unjustifiable claims about SPDT and failed to explain the associated uncertainties.

'The panel also considers that you exploited patients' vulnerability and lack of medical knowledge.'

Dr Kumar added: 'The panel finds that your misconduct has brought the profession into disrepute.'

Dr Kenyon, who touted himself as a 'leader in the science' of SPDT, runs The Dove Clinic, in Twyford, Hampshire and also has consulting rooms in Wimpole Street, central London.

In his witness statement he said: 'I deny ever acting in a deliberately misleading or dishonest way towards anybody during the course of a consultation, whether a bona fide patient or otherwise'.

During SPDT the patient is given a 'sensitiser' then exposed to a light bed and a hand-held ultrasound device.

This is said to activate the sensitiser within the tumour site and kill cancer cells as well as well as provoking an immune response within the patient.

SPDT is a development of a conventionally accepted treatment, Photodynamic Therapy (PDT), which uses light alone to activate the sensitiser for tumours lying on or close to the skin.

It is said to have the advantage of being able to penetrate deeper into the body.

Ben Fitzgerald, for the GMC, said: 'The GMC's case is that SPDT is indeed a novel form of treatment and one in respect of which the evidence of effectiveness is, and was in 2012, extremely limited.

'It is also the kind of unconventional private treatment that patients with advanced and serious forms of cancer may turn to, in a state of some desperation, after the failure of conventional forms of treatment to address their condition.

'In this context it is essential that any doctor offering the treatment should provide accurate and non-misleading information about the evidence of its effectiveness.

'The GMC alleges that Dr Kenyon's statements about SPDT were misleading, because they had the effect of overstating the evidence of its effectiveness without drawing attention sufficiently to the limitations of the evidence.'

The MPTS panel said Dr Kenyon knew the treatment was 'experimental' and he should have given a more balanced view.

Dr Kumar added: 'You were dealing with a gravely ill patient and a relative of such a patient and it was your duty to state the effectiveness of proposed treatment and resultant prognosis with great caution and to be realistic about outcomes.

'It was your responsibility to provide information that the majority of mainstream medical practitioners did not necessarily share your views regarding SPDT and that your practice was at one end of the spectrum of medical opinion.

'You presented yourself as a 'leader in the science' of SPDT, which would have increased the impact your misleading statements had on vulnerable patients.'

The panel must decide what sanction to impose on the doctor's registration - measures available include conditions, a period of suspension or striking him off.

The hearing continues.