Surgeon admits burning initials into patients’ livers
Consultant used laser to imprint letters ‘SB’ on the organs of two people in a transplant operation
A SURGEON has admitted burning his initials into the livers of two transplant patients with a laser beam.
Simon Bramhall, 53, branded “SB” on the organs of a man and a woman undergoing transplant operations.
Yesterday, he admitted two counts of assault by beating at Birmingham Crown Court, but pleaded not guilty to alternative charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Liver surgeons use an argon beam to stop livers bleeding, but can also use the beam to burn the liver’s surface to sketch out the area of an operation.
It is usually not harmful and the marks would normally disappear. But the female patient’s liver did not heal itself in the normal way and the initials were found in a follow-up operation, it is alleged.
After Bramhall’s pleas were entered, prosecutor Tony Badenoch QC said the Crown accepted the consultant’s not guilty pleas in a case which was “without legal precedent in criminal law”.
Bramhall, who appeared in the dock wearing a pink shirt and dark suit, was granted unconditional bail and will be sentenced on Jan 12.
Judge Paul Farrer allowed Bramhall to stand in front of the dock, in the well of the court, as the surgeon pleaded guilty to assaulting a patient whose name is protected by a court order during an operation in August 2013.
He also entered a guilty plea relating to an operation performed on an unknown patient in February of the same year.
Addressing the court after the pleas, Mr Badenoch said: “This has been a highly unusual and complex case, both within the expert medical testimony served by both sides and in law.
“It is factually, so far as we have been able to establish, without legal precedent in criminal law.”
He added that Bramhall was employed as a consultant surgeon at the time of the operations and that both patients were under anaesthetic.
Bramhall was a liver, spleen and pancreatic surgeon who worked at the liver unit within the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, West Midlands, for 12 years.
Describing the offences as an abuse of position, Mr Badenoch said they had been carried out with a disregard for the feelings of unconscious patients.
The offence of assault by beating was to reflect the act of marking the liver and there is no suggestion that he was responsible for physically “beating” either patient.