Renowned UK Surgeon Admits He Initials On The Livers Of 2 Patients

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

A famous UK transplant surgeon admitted this week that he had marked his initials on the livers of two patients in 2013, according to multiple news agencies.

Presenting in Birmingham court on Wednesday, Dr. Simon Bramhall pleaded guilty to two counts of violent assault, according to reports by the Associated Press, the BBC and The Guardian. He pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault, a more serious charge, according to these reports.

The two incidents he confessed to occurred during transplant operations in 2013 - February 9 and August 21 - when Bramhall, 53, was working at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham as a consultant surgeon, according to The Guardian.

He is free on bond and his sentence is scheduled for January 12, the AP reported. People magazine was unable to immediately contact him or his defense Thursday for comment.

After being suspended in 2013 from the hospital where he operated, he told the BBC that he had made a "mistake".

Prosecutor Tony Badenoch reportedly stated in court Wednesday that the case was "extremely unusual and complex" - "both within expert medical testimony presented by the two parties and within the law."

"It is a case, from what we have been able to establish so far, that it has no legal precedent in criminal law," he assured.

"The guilty pleas represent an admission that the act committed was not only reprehensible on an ethical level, but also on a criminal level," Badenoch said. "They reveal that the fact that Dr. Bramhall marked his initials on a patient was not an isolated incident, but an act repeated twice, requiring some skill and concentration. It was done in the presence of colleagues.”

Another prosecutor, Elizabeth Reid, said Bramhall abused the trust of her patients: "It was a deliberate application of illegal force on an anesthetized patient."

Bramhall acted "regardless of the feelings of unconscious patients," Badenoch said, according to the BBC.

His behavior came to light in December 2013 when another doctor who was performing follow-up surgery on one of Bramhall's patients discovered that he had marked his initials "SB" on the person's liver with the help of a blood coagulator. lightning argon, the AP reported.

This electrical instrument is normally used to seal blood vessels and can also be used to highlight the area of operation. The marks he leaves are believed to fade over time and cause no pain in the patient, according to the BBC.

Bramhall - who made news in 2010 by successfully transplanting a liver that had been recovered from a crashed plane - was suspended before the end of 2013 and resigned the following year during the course of a disciplinary investigation.

"I was not fired," he said at the time, according to BBC reports. “I made the decision… I would surrender my resignation. It's a little unfair and I have to keep going."

In February, the UK General Medical Council, which oversees the country's registry of doctors, issued Bramhall a formal warning, according to The Guardian, stating that his conduct “jeopardized the prestige of the profession and it could not happen again.”

The organization informed the newspaper on Wednesday that investigating the doctors' criminal convictions was standard procedure. (Neither the General Medical Council nor the hospital where Bramhall worked could immediately be reached for comment.)

In giving his opinion in February 2014, one of Bramhall's former patients defended him, even while being aware of the allegations against him.

"Even if he put his initials on a transplanted liver, is that so serious?" Tracy Scriven told the Birmingham Mail. "It wouldn't have mattered to me if it had done to me. The man saved my life. I find it a little absurd to be prohibited from working. He is a really good man who can do a great job.”