Dr Rahman was struck off after a tribunal found he wrongly connected the wrong part of a patient’s intestine to the stomach during emergency bowel surgery at Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester. The case turned on what happened inside the operation itself, and on the patient’s condition in the weeks that followed.
The tribunal heard that the error created a closed loop in which bowel contents had nowhere to go except back into the stomach. The patient then reported increasing pain, vomiting and no bowel movements for weeks, before Dr. Anthony Rate took over care a month after the initial procedure and performed a second surgery with a stoma.
Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester
Dr. Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman was an NHS surgeon at Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester when the patient underwent emergency bowel surgery for tumor removal. Rahman and another surgeon decided to perform a procedure described as “not known to man,” then connected the small intestine and stomach in a way that expert testimony later said was “not compatible with life.”
Anthony Blower, a former consultant general and colorectal surgeon who gave expert evidence, said the decision was “as bad as it gets for a consultant surgeon.” He also told the tribunal: “Dr. Abdel Rahman’s procedure can at best be described as bizarre and was a totally unconventional operation that is not compatible with life,” and added, “Patient A would have died in the post-operative period if it was not for the intervention of Mr Rate.”
Dr. Anthony Rate
Family concerns led to Dr. Anthony Rate taking over the patient’s care a month after the first operation. Rate then carried out the second surgery and inserted a stoma, after the original operation left the patient in the closed-loop condition described to the tribunal.
Rahman told the patient and their family that “all the signs are saying” that his bowels would work soon. He later said he believed there was a “witch hunt” against him and pointed to his “unblemished record” of 30 years.
Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service later decided Rahman had shown no remorse, empathy or recognition of the impact on the patient, and that he made no attempt at an apology. The ruling left him struck off after a disciplinary process focused on the surgical decision that connected the wrong part of the intestine to the stomach.
For the patient, the practical result was a second operation and a stoma after weeks of pain, vomiting and no bowel movements. For Rahman, the case ended with removal from the register and a finding that his response to the error offered no apology for what happened in theatre.
