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Controversial neurosurgeon Charlie Teo has been found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and has been reprimanded.
A professional standards committee has also placed conditions on his practising certificate, which will make it difficult for the brain surgeon to operate in Australia.
Charlie Teo arrives at a disciplinary hearing in Sydney in March.Credit: Nick Moir
During eight days of hearings earlier this year, the Health Care Complaints Commission raised extraordinary allegations against Teo after two complaints were received following his disastrous brain surgeries. The outcomes for both female patients were catastrophic.
“We have found the practitioner guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct. We have determined that the practitioner should be reprimanded and that some conditions should be placed on his registration,” the committee found.
The findings against him include that he lacked insight, empathy and judgment and failed to properly explain the risks of the operations.
The committee concluded that Teo did “not exercise appropriate judgment in proceeding to surgical resection” of Patient A. In the case of Patient B, “the practitioner carried out surgery which was different to that proposed to the patient, and the surgical strategy led to unwarranted and excessive removal of normal functional brain.”
The committee also “ultimately concluded that the practitioner’s judgment in deciding to operate on Patient A was inappropriate for the following reasons. First, it was high-risk and inappropriate surgery by reason of the nature and location of the tumour, its genetic type, and that it was diffuse [over a wide area].”
Teo was also criticised for conducting “experimental” surgery that wasn’t done in a clinical trial setting.
“Of greater significance is his lack of reflection on his judgment in offering surgery without supporting statistical data or peer support which, in his own experience, may or may not be proved to have been in error in ten years’ time.
“While the practitioner expresses sorrow and takes responsibility for bad surgical outcomes, he does not express any remorse for offering surgery to Patient A or Patient B. This lack of insight into his judgment causes us concern.”
In August 2021, the NSW Medical Council deemed that the initial complaints against Teo were so serious that his surgeries could possibly place the health and safety of the public at risk. After an urgent hearing, conditions were placed on Teo’s ability to operate.
Teo’s restrictions included that he is not allowed to perform any “recurrent malignant intracranial tumour and brain stem tumour surgical procedures” unless he obtained written approval from an independent neurosurgeon of 20 years’ standing who had to be approved by the Medical Council.
However, Teo could not find a neurosurgeon to approve his surgeries.
In the decision handed down on Wednesday, the committee said it had “endeavoured to appropriately balance the health and safety of the public while ensuring that the practitioner can continue to provide his surgical services to patients”.
In doing so, the committee reduced the level of professional experience from an approved neurosurgeon to 15 years’ experience rather than 20.
The committee found that “the practitioner has, for the most part, become isolated from the majority of his peers, and does not conform to a number of relevant accepted professional standards”.
This week Teo continued to complain that jealous colleagues envious of his superior talents had been out to destroy him for years.
In a podcast this week, he said the two complaints had been lodged by “my enemies” and that “the accuser, the plaintiff, the judge, the jury, and the executioner, are all the same person or the same institution, you got no chance”,
The Professional Standards Committee was chaired by former Family Court judge Jennifer Boland. Also on the panel were two Victorian neurosurgeons and one layperson.
More to come
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