Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman has been permanently struck off after a tribunal found he made a major surgical error during emergency bowel surgery on Patient A at Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester on 25 August 2020. The ruling ended his ability to practise after the panel said he wrongly joined the small intestine to the stomach.
Patient A was left in uncontrollable pain, vomited after the operation and had no bowel movements for three weeks. Another surgeon later carried out a second operation to correct the error.
Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester
Abdel Rahman was working at Royal Oldham Hospital as a consultant general and colorectal surgeon when he carried out the four-hour emergency procedure. He had been there for only a few days as a locum, after qualifying as a surgeon in Egypt in 1993.
The patient had a tumour in his small bowel and a perforated necrotic loop of small bowel. During the operation, Abdel Rahman cut the small bowel to leave two ends. The tribunal said he then mistakenly joined the small intestine to the stomach.
Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service found serious professional misconduct and described the surgery as a totally unconventional operation and not compatible with life. It said the error caused the patient’s bowel contents to pass into his stomach, and reported that the case was as bad as it gets.
Abdel Rahman told the family the surgery was a success. He never apologised or admitted his mistake, and he alleged that there was a witch hunt against him. In his account of the procedure, he said digestive/bowel continuity is maintained, and referred to obstructions that would prevent digestive/bowel continuity.
Patient A’s symptoms and the later corrective operation are the clearest practical result of the ruling: the tribunal accepted that the first surgery failed at the point where the bowel was reconnected, and the doctor’s registration has now been removed. The case leaves the record of that emergency operation fixed around one disputed question — how the surgeon and vascular surgeon decided that joining the intestine to the stomach was the correct procedure.
