A twisted British surgeon literally left his mark on two patients – using a laser beam to carve his initials onto their livers during transplant operations, according to reports.
Dr. Simon Bramhall, 53, who left “SB” on the organs of a man and woman, admitted two counts of assault at Birmingham Crown Court, but pleaded not guilty to charges of assault causing bodily harm.
Surgeons use argon beams to stop livers from bleeding, but can also use the beams to burn the organs’ surfaces to sketch out the area of an operation. The marks normally disappear.
But the female patient’s liver did not heal in the normal way and the initials were discovered in a follow-up operation, according to the Telegraph.
“This has been a highly unusual and complex case, both within the expert medical testimony served by both sides and in law,” prosecutor Tony Badenoch said.
“It is factually, so far as we have been able to establish, without legal precedent in criminal law,” he told Judge Paul Farrer.
Badenoch added that the doctor was as 12-year consultant surgeon at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham at the time of the transplants in February and August 2013.
“The pleas of guilty now entered represent an acceptance that that which he did was not just ethically wrong but criminally wrong,” Badenoch told the court.
“They reflect the fact that Dr. Bramhall’s initialling on a patient’s liver was not an isolated incident but rather a repeated act on two occasions, requiring some skill and concentration. It was done in the presence of colleagues,” he added.
Describing the carvings as an abuse of position, Badenoch said Bramhall carried them out with a disregard for the feelings of his unconscious patients.
“It was an intentional application of unlawful force to a patient whilst anaesthetized,” he said. “His acts in marking the livers of those patients were deliberate and conscious acts.”
Bramhall resigned after a hospital disciplinary hearing in May 2014. Speaking to the BBC after his suspension, he admitted he had made “a mistake.”
He will be sentenced on Jan. 12.