Simon Bramhall: Liver branding surgeon's suspension 'insufficient'

A tribunal will reconsider Simon Bramhall's five-month suspension

The five-month suspension of a surgeon who branded his initials on two patients' livers is to be reconsidered after complaints it was "insufficient."

Simon Bramhall was fined £10,000 at Birmingham Crown Court after the incidents at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2013.

A tribunal in December then suspended him for at least five months saying his fitness to practice had been impaired.

A fresh hearing has been ordered after the General Medical Council appealed.

Bramhall, in his 50s, admitted using an argon beam machine to write his initials on the organs of the anaesthetised patients in January 2018.

A Medical Practitioners Tribunal (MPT) issued the suspension in December but must now reconsider the case, High Court judge Mrs Justice Collins Rice ruled.

The GMC said the suspension would not have protected public confidence in the profession.

"The Medical Practitioners Tribunal did not put its finger on precisely what was and was not wrong with Mr Bramhall's conduct and sanction accordingly," the judge ruled.

The 4cm-high initials of Bramhall were discovered on a patient's liver by chance after the donor organ he had transplanted failed about a week after he carried out the life-saving operation.

The surgeon left the Queen Elizabeth Hospital shortly after branding the two patients' livers

The judge said on the one hand, what Mr Bramhall did was calculatedly harmless, since no physical damage beyond the 'transient and trifling' was done.

"It was also calculatedly inconsequential: the patients were not to know.

"But on the other hand, this was a criminal, non-consensual physical interference."

Bramhall resigned from his job in 2014.

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The former surgeon currently has no licence to practice, according to the GMC.