Dr. Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman has been struck off after a tribunal case over a surgery that left a patient with a blocked bowel and a closed loop that could not move waste forward. The NHS surgeon at Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester mistakenly connected the wrong part of the intestine to the stomach during emergency bowel surgery for tumour removal.
The result was immediate and brutal for Patient A. For weeks after the operation, the patient had increasing pain, vomiting and no bowel movements, while Rahman told the patient and their family that all the signs were saying the bowels would work soon.
The case turned on the scale of the mistake. By connecting the wrong section of bowel, the operation created a circular route in which contents had nowhere to go except back into the stomach. Expert testimony said the procedure was not compatible with life, and Anthony Blower said it was “as bad as it gets for a consultant surgeon.” He also said Patient A would have died in the post-operative period if it was not for the intervention of Mr Rate.
That intervention came a month after the first operation, when the patient’s family raised concerns and Dr. Anthony Rate took over care. Rate carried out a second surgery and gave the patient a stoma, a step that salvaged some bowel and changed the course of the case from a fatal error to a survivable one.
Rahman fought the case by saying he faced a witch hunt and insisting he had never had a single complaint in an unblemished record of 30 years. The tribunal did not accept that account. It said he showed no remorse, empathy or recognition of the impact on Patient A, and no attempt at an apology.
That finding is what ended his career. In professional discipline, a surgeon can be removed from practice when the tribunal concludes that the error was so serious, and the response so lacking in accountability, that continued registration is no longer justified. The unanswered question now is whether Rahman will try to challenge the decision, or whether the striking-off brings the case to a close.
