A British surgeon has been dismissed from his position after an operation went seriously awry, creating a life-threatening situation when the patient’s organs were improperly connected, obstructing normal bowel function.
Testimonies at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service revealed that the patient received emergency surgery to remove a tumor from their bowel, conducted by NHS surgeon Dr. Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman at Greater Manchester’s Royal Oldham Hospital.
In collaboration with another surgeon, Dr. Rahman decided to execute a highly unusual procedure linking the small intestine to the stomach, attempting something uncharted in medical practice.
Yet, during the surgery, a critical mistake occurred. They accidentally linked the wrong section of the intestine to the stomach, an error experts consider incompatible with life.
Consequently, the patient’s intestinal contents ended up looping back into the stomach, effectively going around in circles, with no proper exit pathway.
Despite the patient reporting increasing pain and vomiting with no bowel movements for weeks afterwards, Rahman seemed unconcerned, according to a nurse.
The doctor even told the patient and their family that “all the signs are saying” that his bowels would work soon.
Rahman and his colleague had decided to connect the two organs to maintain digestive and bowel continuity, and had even tested for no obstructions.
A month after the initial procedure, Dr. Anthony Rate, another colorectal surgeon at the same hospital, took over care after the patient’s family raised concerns.
Rate performed a second surgery and managed to salvage some of the bowel by giving the patient a stoma, a surgical opening in the abdomen for waste to come out.
An expert witness at the tribunal, former consultant general and colorectal surgeon Anthony Blower, said Rahman’s decision was “as bad as it gets for a consultant surgeon.”
“[The patient] would have died in the post-operative period if it was not for the intervention,” Blower said in court.
He added that the initial move connecting the stomach and intestine would have been “extremely difficult” to perform because of the huge tumor present in the patient.
“Dr. Abdel Rahman’s procedure can at best be described as bizarre and was a totally unconventional operation that is not compatible with life,” Blower said.
“Patient A would have died in the post-operative period if it was not for the intervention of Mr Rate.”
During the tribunal, Rahman believed there was a “witch hunt” against him, claiming he had never had a single complaint among his “unblemished record” of 30 years.
Regardless of the doctor’s claims, the tribunal decided Rahman had given no “remorse, empathy, or recognition of the impact on” the patient and “no attempt at an apology.”
The court decided to remove him from the list of doctor’s at the hospital, and an immediate suspension was put in place in case he chooses to appeal against the decision.