An NHS locum surgeon has been struck off the medical register after botching an emergency bowel operation so severely that it was described as "not compatible with life" and "not known to man" by a General Medical Council (GMC) expert witness.
Botched procedure at Royal Oldham Hospital
Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman performed the emergency bowel procedure on a young man at the Royal Oldham Hospital on August 25, 2020. The operation went wrong, resulting in the contents of the patient's bowel, excluding his stomach, being re-deposited back into his stomach through a circular "closed loop", the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) heard.
The patient was left in "uncontrollable pain" and could have died if not for another surgeon rectifying the error in a second operation, the misconduct hearing of the MPTS, sitting in Manchester, was told.
Failure to recognise complications
Despite concerns raised by the patient's parents and other medics, Dr Rahman at no point considered that something may have gone wrong surgically, the tribunal heard. A former consultant general and colorectal surgeon, acting as the GMC's expert witness, said the procedure carried out by Dr Rahman was "not known to man" and his mistake was "as bad as it gets".
Dr Rahman, who graduated in 1993 from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, did not attend the hearing and was not legally represented. He claimed he had been made a "scapegoat" after a "witch hunt" following the operation.
Violation of restrictions and removal from register
The MPTS imposed an order restricting his medical practice in July 2021, but Dr Rahman violated the terms of the order when he applied for and secured a position as a locum at Affidea Express Care Clinic in Ireland in February 2022. This violation was deemed an "aggravating" factor by the tribunal, adding to already "significant" mistakes in surgery and post-operative care.
The tribunal determined in a ruling last month that Dr Rahman's misconduct was "fundamentally incompatible with continued registration", resulting in his removal from the medical register that permitted him to practise medicine.
