UK surgeon barred from practicing medicine after autographing patients' livers with initials

The UK’s medical register has suspended a doctor who has been accused of branding patients’ livers with his initials, according to reports from The Guardian.

In 2017, Simon Bramhall pleaded guilty to using an argon beam during surgery to brand his initials on two liver transplants, according to documents from the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), a tribunal service that makes independent decisions about a doctor’s fitness to practice medicine.

Another doctor discovered Branmhall’s 1.6-inch initials when one of the transplanted livers failed, the same source says.

The medical tribunal concluded on Monday that Bramhall should be struck off the medical register, as the act was “borne out of professional arrogance.”

As a result of his initials being found on the livers, he was suspended from his job as a consultant surgeon in 2013 and forced to resign from his position in 2014 at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital while being investigated.

However, the MPTS reviewed Bramhall’s case in December 2020, including statements from the doctor, who admitted he “foolishly made a mark on the adjacent liver” in 2013 and that his actions were “utterly wrong,” according to the MPTS documents.

Bramhall’s legal counsel argued that the former doctor’s “fitness to practice was no longer impaired,” and that the case was never about the former doctor’s surgical skills, but about his disrespect for the dignity of the patients.

The MPTS “was satisfied that there is no discernible risk of repetition” and concluded that Bramhall’s fitness to practice is “no longer impaired by reason of conviction.” The order that suspended him from practice was revoked.

The MPTS re-examined the case on Monday, and during a hearing, and accepted that neither patient’s physical condition had been damaged, but that Bramhall’s actions caused “significant emotional harm” to one of them.

While they said Bramhall was of “previous good character,” banning him from the medical register was the proper punishment, and even though he was providing lifesaving services, he was still in “gross violation of his patients’ dignity and autonomy,” the MPTS concluded.

Bramhall was immediately suspended following the hearing, but he has 28 days to appeal.