Surgeon who ‘botched 100 ops’ dodges disciplinary action

A SURGEON pursued for damages by dozens of patients has been allowed to avoid disciplinary action by taking himself off the medical register.

Up to 100 patients claim that Professor Muftah Eljamel ruined their health, say solicitors.

One patient said a botched operation nearly killed him. The children of another said their father was left brain damaged after Eljamel dismissed signs of water on the brain.

Eljamel, 58, was head of neurosurgery at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee until last year, when the General Medical Council imposed an ‘interim order’ severely limiting his practice after allegations of harm and neglect going back to 2007. He was suspended from his post but allowed to leave without disciplinary action.

He would have faced being struck off by a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel after a fitness to practise hearing. But last month he was allowed to take himself off the medical register, using a process known as ‘voluntary erasure’.

He is one of at least 24 doctors facing fitness to practise hearings who have chosen this way to avoid the risk of being struck off since 2008. Patients said Eljamel had been allowed to get away scot-free while they would pay for his mistakes for the rest of their lives.

Former disc jockey Patrick Kelly, 55, claimed he was the victim of a ‘botched operation’ by Eljamel for back pain in 2007.

During the operation, Mr Kelly’s ribs were cracked and a lung deflated. ‘I almost lost my life when my wound opened and I started to haemorrhage very badly,’ he said.

Niall Dickson, chief executive of the GMC, said: ‘We will only allow a doctor to remove themselves from the medical register if it is in the best interests of patients.’

A spokesman for NHS Tayside, which runs Ninewells Hospital, apologised to patients for any suffering and said ‘lessons had been learned’. Douglas Jessiman of BTO Solicitors in Glasgow, representing Eljamel, said the doctor ‘has no comment to make’.