A doctor has been banned from practising after a botched operation left a patient with his bowel wrongly connected to his stomach, causing 'uncontrollable pain' and a life-threatening condition.
Botched procedure
Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman, an NHS locum surgeon at Royal Oldham Hospital, performed a five-hour emergency procedure in August 2020. During the operation, he connected the patient's bowel to his stomach, creating a circular 'closed loop' that prevented the man from going to the toilet for three weeks.
A medical practitioners' tribunal heard the blunder could have cost the patient his life had another medic not performed a second operation to correct it. A fellow doctor described the mistakes as being 'at the extreme end of surgical error'.
Surgeon's account
In his own account, Dr Rahman said he performed a laparotomy, making an incision in the abdomen, on August 25, 2020. He said he had to cut a small bowel in two to remove a tumour, but the procedure caused so much bleeding that he called for assistance.
The pair then carried out a gastrojejunostomy, attaching the stomach to the jejunum, part of the small intestine, to maintain the patient's digestive system. However, the patient reported 'increasing pain' and his bowels not functioning properly. By September 4, he was in a 'pain crisis', with discomfort becoming 'uncontrollable' weeks later, leading to continuous vomiting and fluid extraction.
Expert findings
An experienced consultant general surgeon who took over the case found Dr Rahman had connected the man's bowels with his stomach, forming a continuous loop. He said: 'I found that he had a retro-colic gastro-jejunostomy, but unfortunately the proximal loop of the resected small bowel had been anatomised to the stomach rather than the distal, this meant that the bowel contents leaving the stomach had nowhere to go apart from back into the stomach in a circular fashion.'
Another surgeon witness said he had never seen such a blunder, describing it as 'extremely wrong' and 'as bad as it gets for a consultant surgeon'. He added that Dr Rahman should have sought help earlier, as all surgeons should 'know their limitations'.
Misleading family
Despite the complications, Dr Rahman told the patient's family the procedure had been successful, assuring the parents that the operation had been done 'millions of times'.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) had previously placed restrictions on Dr Rahman, requiring him to seek permission before working outside the UK. He breached those conditions by taking a locum job at Affidea Express Care Clinic in Ireland.
Struck off
Ryan Donoghue, representing the General Medical Council (GMC), said Dr Rahman had performed an operation resulting in a condition 'incompatible with life'. He failed to address the patient's reports of severe pain and did not seek a second opinion.
In a ruling last month, the MPTS concluded that Dr Rahman's conduct was 'fundamentally incompatible with continued registration' and removed him from the medical register, indefinitely banning him from practising as a doctor.
