Free to go back to work, surgeon who branded his initials into patients’ livers
A surgeon who branded his initials on the livers of two of his patients escaped jail yesterday and can continue to practise.
simon Bramhall left the ‘sB’ markings as a ‘naive and foolhardy’ attempt to relieve tension in the operating theatre after the lengthy and life-saving procedures.
The surgeon used an argon beam coagulator to imprint his initials on two anaesthetised victims at Birmingham’s Queen elizabeth Hospital in 2013.
Yesterday, Bramhall, 53, described as a ‘distinguished and highly skilled surgeon’ who had ‘saved many lives’ after performing 371 liver transplants, was fined £10,000, handed a 12-month community order and told to do 120 hours of unpaid work. He was also told to pay £1,200 in legal costs.
The court heard that when a concerned theatre nurse queried what he was up to, Bramhall told her: ‘This is what I do’.
His actions were discovered after the liver transplant of one of his victims, known as Patient A, failed for unrelated reasons and another surgeon opened up the patient and saw the markings.
That surgeon asked a colleague to take a photo of the branding on his Black-Berry and reported the matter to hospital executives in December that year.
The patient was informed of the assault during a check-up in January 2014 and described the discovery as being similar to finding out they were a rape victim.
Judge Paul Farrer, QC, sentencing, told Bramhall his unnamed victim ‘suffered an extreme reaction’ to what happened.
He said the patient had lost trust in doctors, has ‘flashbacks and nightmares’ and had shown symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. The patient has not been able to shake the ‘erroneous’ belief that the failure of the liver transplant was caused by his actions.
The judge added: ‘This was conduct born of professional arrogance of such magnitude that it strayed into criminal behaviour. What you did was an abuse of power and a betrayal of trust that these patients had invested in you.’
But one of his patients who underwent a transplant by him more than ten years ago told the BBC he should not be punished. Kathryn Hodgson, from grantham, Lincolnshire, said: ‘An artist signs his work and that’s just what he’s done.
‘Because the difficulty in the surgery and everything you have to do with it… 13-plus hours of being stood there concentrating on something. It’s just amazing, so signing his work is just his way of showing the artwork he’s done.’
Marking a liver with an argon beam coagulator would not normally be harmful and the marks usually disappear.
Bramhall, of Tarrington, Herefordshire, admitted two counts of assault at Birmingham Crown Court last month.
Frank Ferguson, head of special crime at the Crown Prosecution service, said the case was ‘unique’ in British legal history. He said the victims were ‘vulnerable’ because there ‘is no greater trust than the trust a patient places in a surgeon when they are having an operation and no greater vulnerability than that of a patient under general anaesthetic.
‘The breach of that trust and the abuse of that power were aggravating features that led us to conclude it was the right thing to do to take this case forward.’
The surgeon resigned from Queen elizabeth Hospital in 2014 after feeling his position had become ‘untenable’.
He is now working as a general surgeon The County Hospital in Hereford. A spokesman for Wye Valley nHs Trust said: ‘The gMC has judged Mr Bramhall fit to practise. He does not carry out liver transplants at the Trust.’
‘Signing his artwork’