Surgeon Who Etched His Initials on Patients’ Livers Is Convicted of Assault
According to British news reports, Mr. Bramhall, 53, admitted to using an argon beam — an electrified gas jet
that liver surgeons typically employ to stanch bleeding or to mark an area of operation on an organ — to etch "SB," his initials, onto the livers.
Joyce Robins, who represented Patient Concern, a campaign group, was quoted by The Guardian as saying at the time: "This is a patient we are talking about, not an autograph book." At Birmingham Crown Court on Thursday, the lead prosecutor, Tony Badenoch, said
that Mr. Bramhall’s guilty pleas "represent an acceptance that that which he did was not just ethically wrong but criminally wrong." Please verify you’re not a robot by clicking the box.
Mr. Bramhall said that His acts in marking the livers of those patients were deliberate and conscious acts.
The surgeon, Simon Bramhall, who gained fame in 2010 after successfully transplanting a plane-crash victim’s liver
into a patient, pleaded guilty in Birmingham, England, on Thursday to two counts of assault by beating.
15, 2017
LONDON — A prominent British surgeon who etched his initials onto the livers of two patients, in a case
that shocked many with its audacity, has been convicted of assault.
Earlier this year, the General Medical Council issued a formal warning to Mr. Bramhall, saying
that while his actions were not serious enough to "require any restriction" on his registration, his conduct had not met the standards required of a doctor.
"Even if he did put his initials on a transplanted liver, is it really
that bad?" she told The Birmingham Mail in 2014, after Mr. Bramhall was suspended.
