NHS Tayside allowed patients to be harmed by a "negligent" neurosurgeon for years, because the health board didn’t have the systems in place to pick up on his mistakes, the BBC has claimed.
Revelations in BBC Scotland’s new investigative series, Disclosure, show that Professor Sam Eljamel was allowed to continue operating even after an external investigation found he was injuring patients.
According to the report, patients were harmed during brain and spinal surgery, and that, in some cases, operations which patients had been told had taken place hadn’t actually been carried out.
Expert neurosurgeon Donald Campbell, who looked over the medical records of some of Eljamel’s patients, said the Prof had been “negligent.”
Patrick Kelly, from Dundee, had spinal surgery under Eljamel in 2007, but, according to Campbell, the doctor “never actually removed any bone or disc.”
Campbell added; “He’s opened the patient, and then come out again. I can’t think of any explanation why that should be done.”
Kelly – who is currently suing NHS Tayside – said he has been left in constant pain.
Eljamel was meant to have removed Jules Rose’s brain tumour, but he removed her entire tear gland.
Rose told the programme: “He needs to be held to account for what he’s done. And NHS Tayside. Because they’ve allowed this as well.”
The programme also reveals that Eljamel wasn’t carrying out spinal surgery in the correct way, which led to some patients having operations on the wrong part of the spine.
An internal NHS Tayside report states the recognised practice is for a surgeon to carry out an x-ray on the patient’s spine on the operating table to ensure surgery is carried out on the correct disc. But that Eljamel would instead “manually manipulate and count the spinal bones”, and operate without the x-ray.
It reveals he also taught his junior surgeons to operate in this way, and that they too harmed patients.
Sue Grant, Head of Clinical Negligence at Digby Brown, whose firm represents some patients suing the health board, said: “I do find it a little difficult to understand how trainee surgeons were allowed to be trained in practices which were not approved by the other neurosurgeons within the unit and how that was allowed to continue to happen for as long as it was. But, again, the senior members of the team in Ninewells would have to explain that.”
NHS Tayside told the BBC it acted “immediately” to suspend Eljamel after it received results of a review of his work.
Professor Eljamel’s lawyer told BBC Scotland his client had “no comment to make”. It’s understood he no longer lives in Scotland, with the Courier reporting in April that he could now be in the US or the Philippines.
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