NHS surgeon who performed 'not known to man' botched op gets struck off

A foreign doctor who bungled an operation so severely it was described as "not compatible with life" has been struck off the medical register.

Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman, an NHS locum surgeon, performed the emergency bowel procedure on a young man but botched the operation. This resulted in the contents of the patient's bowel, leaving 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.

Despite the patient's parents and other medics expressing concerns, 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 General Medical Council'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, conducted at the Royal Oldham Hospital, where he was working as a locum on August 25, 2020.

The MPTS imposed an order restricting his medical practice in July of the following year, 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, the tribunal discovered.

This violation of the work-related order was deemed an "aggravating" factor by the tribunal, adding to already "significant" mistakes in surgery and post-operative care, the hearing heard.

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.