Sydney neurosurgeon Charlie Teo’s medical hearing to hear from doctors, nurses

A man has told a medical tribunal he blames Dr Charlie Teo for his wife’s death, after she was left in a vegetative state following a surgery to remove part of a tumour from her brain.

A Victorian man has told a medical tribunal he blames Dr Charlie Teo for his wife’s death, after she was left in a vegetative state following a surgery to remove part of a tumour from her brain.

On the second day of hearing into whether Dr Teo exercised appropriate judgment in offering to operate on two patients with late-stage brain cancer, a man claimed Dr Teo admitted to “acting negligently and cutting too much” of his wife’s brain in a phone call with his daughter.

“I suggest to you that did not happen,” Dr Teo’s barrister Matthew Hutchings told the man.

“I heard parts of the call,” the man responded. “Charlie was getting upset.”

The man’s wife was left in vegetative state following the resection surgery in 2018, an outcome her husband claimed was never expressed as a risk to he or his wife by Dr Teo.

Neurosurgeon Charlie Teo arrives for a Health Care Complaints Commission Professional Standards Committee inquiry on Tuesday. Picture: NCA Newswire

“We never had a discussion with Charlie that it could go badly, he said what would come out of this is that she would be paralysed down the left — she said she could deal with that because she was paralysed anyway,” he told the tribunal.

“She would have a bit of memory loss. That was the only discussion we had about the operation that we could understand.”

However, Dr Chris Profyris, who was present during the consultation prior to the operation, gave evidence from Sri Lanka, where he confirmed the risk of death and coma had been outlined to the man and his wife.

“Do you recall discussions around the risk that she might enter into a coma state,” Mr Hutchings asked.

“It was, there was a discussion of complications, death, coma, infection,” Dr Profyris responded.

Dr Profyris said the woman understood it was not a “straight forward surgery” that was “absolutely occasioned by risk”.

A letter addressed to the woman’s home address from Dr Teo’s office was also shown to the man, which stated “(Patient B) has decided she wants to proceed with surgery, she understands the risks include death, paralysis, infection, stroke …”.

He denied ever having seen the letter.

Patient B’s husband told the tribunal that while his wife knew Dr Teo could not cure her, his wife was desperate for more time with her grandkids, and wanted to undergo surgery with Dr Teo to extend her life.

“My wife for a long time watched videos of Charlie on YouTube, she thought he was a god to be honest, she said that couple of times,” he said.

He said his wife was set on having the surgery after Dr Teo promised to “buy her time” at a 2018 consultation.

“Charlie said he would tell it as it is … he said ‘if you don’t have the operation by Tuesday you will be dead by Friday’…. He said ‘I will buy you time’,” the tribunal heard.

“But he said: ‘If you don’t have the surgery, that’s fine, a tumour is a f***ing good way to die, you will feel no pain, you will fall asleep’.

“That’s what turned my wife around to have the surgery.”

He lodged a complaint following with the Health Care Complaints Commission after his wife’s death in March 2019.

When questioned by Mr Hutchings about whether he “blamed Dr Teo for (his wife) no longer being here”, the man simply replied “yes”.

The tribunal heard the woman’s daughter believed Dr Teo was a “big shot” and that he told an intensive care nurse to tie her mum to a chair “with bedsheets if you have to” to try and wake her following a brain surgery.

The woman’s daughter said she did not want her mum to undergo the procedure, and that she didn’t know why Dr Teo was the only person in Australia offering the surgery.

The hearing will continue on Wednesday.