Neurosurgeon Charlie Teo fires off at ‘disgusting’ 60 Minutes piece

Neurosurgeon Charlie Teo has responded to claims he charged large sums of money for ultimately futile operations that left patients catastrophically injured.

Neurosurgeon Charlie Teo has furiously responded to claims he charged large sums of money for ultimately futile operations that left patients catastrophically injured.

In an explosive interview with A Current Affair’s Tracy Grimshaw, Dr Teo addressed specific accusations in response to a “comprehensive” piece aired by 60 Minutes last weekend.

The joint investigation involved interviews with multiple families who were furious about the large financial burdens they endured, and being given what they characterised as false hope.

Dr Teo agreed to a one-on-one sit-down interview with program host Tracy Grimshaw — in which the ACA host grilled him over allegations aired in the 60 Minutes show.

He blasted the 60 Minutes report as “abhorrent and disgusting”. While he admitted he had made mistakes in his career — he said the idea that he was just in it for the money was totally false.

“For some outsiders not sitting in the room with you having a discussion with the patient, it‘s so wrong for them to judge you on what’s going on in the room,” Dr Teo said.

“If someone is trying to portray me as some money-hungry bastard that was operating and hurting children based on money, that’s what I want to correct. It’s not that case.”

Dr Teo responded to one case where a patient lost their ability to see, explaining that he never gave a 100 per cent guarantee the procedure would not result in blindness.

“If I had guaranteed that there was no chance of blindness, that is me saying the wrong thing, that’s misinformation,” he said.

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Monica Lopresti travelled to Spain in order to receive the surgery. Picture: Supplied.

“I don’t do that, you can’t do that and not get sued, someone will sue you one day and after 11,000 cases, you don’t think if I have set out to a handful of patients I’d be sued by those patients?

“In that case, I thought the chance of blindness was almost zero, but I never give a guarantee. They are claiming I said that I guarantee you won’t be blind, that is absolute lie, I did not say that I would never say that you be foolish to say that.”

Dr Teo said “it‘s wrong for doctors to project their idea of quality of life” onto a patient and insisted he carried the devastation from failed operations with him daily.

He revealed he has photos of his patients on his phone to remind him of the importance of his job.

“There is a French vascular surgeon who wrote a book on the philosophy of surgery, and I don’t think you can put in any better words when he said ‘every surgeon carries with himself a small cemetery’.

“My cemetery is not small, it’s a significant sized cemetery. (I have) pictures of my patients on my phone to remind me every day I’ve got to do it better.”

Neurosurgeon Charlie Teo has responded to claims he charged large sums of money for ultimately futile operations that left patients catastrophically injured. Picture: A Current Affair

Some of Dr Teo’s patients, including 24-year-old Sydney woman Monica Lopresti, leapt to his defence this week.

Despite being fit and in perfect health, Ms Lopresti began losing her memory in February 2021 to the point where she was “forgetting her brother’s name,” she told news.com.au.

While she returned normal blood tests, her symptoms worsened over time. Then in May 2022, an MRI revealed that she was suffering a benign cystic tumour in the middle of her brain. After seven Sydney-based neurosurgeons refused to operate on her, Dr Teo agreed.

Ms Lopresti says Dr Teo explained the risks, which included death, paralysis and being left in a vegetative state, she decided to proceed with the surgery, which took place in Spain on July 21.

Commenting on the accusations, Mr Lopresti says that “to say that Dr Teo gave false hope or robbed people. It just isn’t true”.

“I wasn’t living a life. I was always calling in sick and I wasn’t having the quality of life that I wanted.”

Since August 2021, Dr Teo has been barred from operating in Australia, despite daily requests from desperate patients.

Ms Lopresti said the care she believes she was well aware of the risks. Picture: Supplied.

Rules imposed by the Medical Council of NSW since August 2021 mean Dr Teo is unable to perform high-risk procedures unless he has written approval from a second independent neurosurgeon with more than 20 years of specialist experience.

Recently speaking to Mark Soderstrom on the podcast The Soda Room, Dr Teo said he believes his restrictions are the result of a broken medical system.

“It’s a dysfunctional system whereby a competitor can make a vexatious complaint about you, you are immediately presumed to be guilty,” he said.

“And then you’ve got to prove your innocence to the very person who complained about you. How can that system work?”

Dr Teo said the restrictions meant that he is unable to perform lifesaving surgeries, which he estimates leaves nine patients a week without potentially lifesaving care.

“So the sadness of the situation is that my entire practice was mostly taking out tumours that other people called inoperable, so that was 90 per cent of my practice,” he said.

“That’s 10 tumours a week. So that means, quite conceivably, that there are nine patients a week, who are missing out on either extension of life or cure from a condition that I know that I can help. Now that’s sad.”