Neurosurgeon Charlie Teo defends slapping patient on face
Charlie Teo has admitted to slapping a female patient in the face her in a medical way, arguing it wasn’t a “Will Smith-type slap”.
Controversial neurosurgeon Charlie Teo has defended slapping a patient across the face to wake them up, contrasting it to actor Will Smith’s Oscars slap.
The admission came as Dr Teo made a passionate admission in a medical hearing against him, saying he takes full responsibility for the fact he “damaged” a woman, while his patient’s widower told the medical board he paid $35,000 for his wife to die.
The Health Care Complaints Commission’s professional standards committee is assessing two complaints of alleged misconduct by Dr Teo, relating to a 41-year-old Perth mum and a 61-year-old Geelong grandmother who were left in a vegetative state after their surgeries in 2018 and 2019, and later died.
It is alleged he did not sufficiently explain the risks of surgery on the brain tumours which other surgeons had deemed inoperable.
The HCCC’s inquiry resumed on Monday after the panel sought more documents and scans following five days of evidence heard last month.
As Dr Teo returned to the witness stand to give evidence, he was asked about the contents of the complaint by the husband of the Geelong woman, who died months after her February 2018 surgery.
Reading the complaint, the HCCC’s Kate Richardson SC said the husband knew she would have left-side paralysis but was never told she wouldn’t wake up from the partial right lobectomy.
“She died and I never got to say goodbye,” Ms Richardson said, reading the complaint.
“I paid $35,000 for my wife to die … we were told he could give her more time.”
The same man earlier told the hearing Dr Teo told his late wife she would be “f***ing dead by Friday” if she did not have the surgery by the following Tuesday.
The husband alleged Dr Teo said to the patient, “What the f*** are you crying about? I’m here to fix you – you should be happy”.
Dr Teo strenuously denied he swore on either of those occasions. Regarding the “dead by Friday” allegation, he told the hearing he said she “could” be dead by Friday but not that she would be.
“She could’ve died any minute,” he said.
Dr Teo was also asked about slapping the patient across the face in front of her family after she wouldn’t wake up from surgery, which one other surgeon earlier called “assault” in evidence given to the hearing.
After admitting he did slap her on the face, he said his “only error” was accidentally not closing the curtains enough and allowing a family member to see it.
“I accept I slapped her in a medical way like this (taps his face gently multiple times) as opposed to the Will Smith-type slap,” he said.
“I still do it today and I will continue to do it … slapping on the face wakes them (patients) up pretty quickly if they’re going to wake up.”
Regarding the Perth woman, Dr Teo was asked repeatedly if he accepted he crossed over the midline of the brain, to which he said he did, because the enhanced – or focused – part of the tumour crossed the midline.
Asked by Ms Richardson if he accepted he had told the woman’s widower he did not know where the midline was and “cut across the line and damaged the other side”, Dr Teo put his head in his hands before saying: “Yes … we can resolve this. I did something wrong. Clearly I damaged this lady”.
“Whatever happened, I take full responsibility for the fact it was my hand, my technique, my doing, that she didn’t wake up.”
Dr Teo told the inquiry he did not know if crossing the midline was the reason the surgery ended the way it did.
“The point is that I made an error, a surgical error, I went too far and I damaged this lady – no one is disputing that,” he said.
Throughout the hearing, Dr Teo has maintained he explained all relevant risks and their likelihood to both patients.
The woman’s widower earlier told the inquiry Dr Teo had put the risk of “major complications” at 5 per cent and minor ones at 50 per cent, and that he sold them hope of the woman being able to make it to her six-year-old son’s 18th birthday.
Earlier on Monday, experienced neurosurgeon Professor Andrew Morokoff told the hearing it was his view Dr Teo’s surgery was “highly risky and unreasonable”, adding such a “radical” surgery would be considered “more acceptable” in other parts of the brain.
He told the hearing the scans showed the resection crossed the midline of the brain and that it went slightly past the enhanced part, into the “diffused” part, where it mixes with normal brain tissue.
But Dr Morokoff told the hearing it was difficult to determine the boundary of enhanced and diffused tumour, and therefore Dr Teo could have “unintentionally” crossed it.
When post-surgery MRI scans were first put before the hearing in February, another neurosurgeon said it showed the largest tumour resection he had seen in more than 50 years, while another expressed concern about the “huge amount of normal brain tissue” removed.
The current hearing could result in further conditions imposed on Dr Teo’s registration.
The NSW Medical Council has already barred the 65-year-old from operating in Australia since August 2021 without written approval, following an investigation into alleged unsatisfactory workplace conduct.
That followed a joint Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes investigation which revealed Dr Teo had charged some families large amounts of money for operations that allegedly injured his patients.
Dr Teo has come under fire for operating on patients with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) — an inoperable type of tumour found on the brain stem — with one leading American surgeon describing any attempt to operate as “incomprehensible”.
But Dr Teo claims he has been demonised by the Australian media and other practitioners.
Outside court on Monday, Dr Teo told journalists he wished “the whole system was about the truth”.
“Tell the truth and the truth will set you free,” he said.
The hearing continues.