Charlie Teo settled claim for operating on wrong side of Sydney woman’s brain

Michelle Smith’s specialists were baffled when they reviewed her MRI scans from brain surgery she’d undergone more than a decade ago.

A craniotomy had been performed on the left side of her head when her tumour was on the right.

Their puzzlement soon turned to horror when they suspected her neurosurgeon Charlie Teo had not only failed to remove her tumour, he had operated on the wrong side of her brain.

Ms Smith, from Bradbury in Sydney’s west, left school in Year 10 because of her epileptic seizures.

The seizures would occur without warning and she was aware of nothing until she woke up with people around her or she would find herself in an Emergency Department.

After seeing Dr Teo on television, Ms Smith, then 19, was convinced the celebrity neurosurgeon could remove the tumour that was causing her epileptic seizures.

Her mother Anica Bolic recalls their consultation with Dr Teo in 2003. Her daughter thought he was “cool”. Her mother did not.

“He had a jelly snake hanging out of his mouth” and his feet on the desk, Ms Bolic said. He explained the operation would be expensive but that he was the best person to do it.

He then posed the question to her: “So you need to decide how much is your daughter’s life worth?”

As it turned out it was $46,000. After her brain surgery, Ms Smith was in hospital overnight and then sent home.

Although Dr Teo proclaimed the surgery a success, the seizures were still occurring and within three years Ms Smith was suffering multiple seizures every day.

If he [Dr Teo] had done it correctly the first time, he would not have literally destroyed my life.

Michelle Smith

Because of the seizures, full-time employment was impossible. After she had a car accident due to a seizure, Ms Smith went to see other specialists.

Studying Dr Teo’s MRI scans 12 years later, her new specialists informed her that the MRI scans showed no evidence of any surgery on the tumour. Instead, scar tissue indicated that Dr Teo may have removed healthy brain tissue from the other side of her brain.

Dr Teo later indicated that he was justified in conducting the operation in the manner he did, describing the procedure as: “Dura [outer layer of tissue] opened and reflected. Right mesial posterior parietal [position in brain] tumour approached from left-sided craniotomy. Falxciotomy performed for access to right side of brain.”

Neurosurgeon Dr Charlie Teo in September 2011.Credit: Quentin Jones

In 2016 another neurosurgeon successfully removed the tumour. The operation was done in a public hospital and cost Ms Smith nothing.

Ms Smith is thrilled with what she has accomplished in the five years since her second surgery. “If he [Dr Teo] had done it correctly the first time, he would not have literally destroyed my life,” she said of what she sees as more than a decade of lost time and opportunities.

In 2019 she sued Dr Teo for professional negligence and the case was later settled. While the terms remain confidential, Ms Smith was very happy with the outcome.

Dr Teo told the Herald that after treating 11,000 patients over his 35-year career he has been sued only twice.

“One was settled out of court while the other was thrown out of court,” he said in a statement.

“Dr Teo’s insurers paid out one claim on the basis that they did not want to incur the expense of a court case, against Dr Teo’s view that he could mount a successful defence,” his statement said.

Not the first time

This was not the first time Dr Teo had operated on the wrong side of the brain.

Charlie Teo pictured in Rosebery this week.Credit: Nick Moir

A medical malpractice suit was filed against him in America after he performed a biopsy on the wrong side of a military serviceman’s brain when he was working in Arkansas.

In 1997, the US District Court found there was a jurisdictional problem with the case as Dr Teo and the assisting doctor were civilian doctors contracted by the hospital.

Therefore, the US government should have been sued, not the doctors.

“Due to American privacy laws Charlie cannot comment on whether the named individual was a patient or not. Additionally, Charlie values the privacy of his patients and will not discuss their medical history or details about their care,” Dr Teo has previously said via his lawyers.

Earlier this week the Medical Council slapped conditions on Dr Teo’s registration because of concerns of risks to the public. They will remain in force until the Health Care Complaints Commission finalises its investigations.

So you need to decide how much is your daughter’s life worth?

Charlie Teo to the mother of patient Michelle Smith

It is understood that the council’s “immediate action panel” was convened following complaints from several interstate neurosurgeons alleging that Dr Teo performed operations that left financially stressed interstate patients stranded in the NSW public hospital system or that they were sent back home without adequate care arrangements in place.

One interstate doctor told the Herald that when the patient arrives home, sometimes in a “terrible” state, “the first discussion with the family always shocks them”.

Often they have been told that the patient would make a full recovery after “a couple more weeks in ICU [Intensive Care Unit]“.

The doctor said that when families realise that the patient is not going to recover, “significant embarrassment and shame often overwhelms them when they realise that they have spent so much money of their own and of others - for this outcome”.

“Unfortunately, I came out a lot worse than before I went in for brain stem surgery five years ago this week,” said one interstate patient.

She was losing her speech and her balance, but her doctors said there was nothing more they could do for her.

Having heard of Dr Teo’s miracles, she flew to Sydney for an operation that cost more than $100,000.

Dr Teo told her the operation was “100 per cent successful” and that she’d be up and walking in no time.

But she never walked again. She spent a month in Sydney’s Prince of Wales hospital as no commercial airline would fly her. This was followed by four months in a public hospital in Melbourne and then eight months of rehab. It was all to no avail.

She is wheelchair-bound and struggles to speak.

Tale of two Teos

There are just as many other patients who won’t hear a bad word said about Dr Teo.

“There are PLENTY of neurosurgeons who say inoperable because THEY don’t have the skills to do it. And that’s why Charlie gets targeted. He doesn’t give false hope at all. There is no such thing as false hope with brain cancer. He gives us time,” emailed one woman who is a full-time carer for her husband who is “battling this mongrel disease.”

Just this week almost 4000 people have signed a “Support for Dr Charlie Teo” petition.

“I am sick of so-called specialists fobbing patients off because they have reached their capacity instead of referring on to someone more capable. Personally know a few people who have been to CT and had great success. It really is a conspiracy against the most talented…..those who outshine ! Jealousy and ego run amok!” wrote Jenelle Green.

“Dr Teo saved my uncle’s life, without him he was given 6 weeks to live. 15 years later and he’s still with us! Our family could not be more grateful to this amazing surgeon and human being,” wrote Mel Brown.

It’s a tale of two Teos and it has been ever since Dr Teo first hit the headlines in a Sun-Herald article in 1988 during a doctor’s strike over unpaid overtime.

Instead of complaining about the 100 hours he worked each week, Dr Teo appeared to be bragging about being “the hardest-working registrar at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital”.

Dr Charlie Teo in December 8, 1988 as a resident Neurosurgeon at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.Credit: Quentin Jones

“How fitting that controversial convicted insider trader Rene Rivkin should choose neurosurgeon Charlie Teo to remove the tumours that have been discovered in his brain and that promise to keep him out of weekend detention at Silverwater jail for several months,” reported The Australian in 2003.

“After all, Teo is one of the few blokes in Sydney who is colourful enough to put Rivkin in the shade. Unloved by most of his contemporaries because of his high profile and his ability to operate successfully on patients judged by other neurosurgeons to have inoperable tumours, Teo is anything but a typical medico.”

For years Dr Teo’s grandiosity and his claims to have superior medical skills while declining to produce scientific evidence to support these assertions, has irked the profession.

Speaking on the podcast, Five of My Life, Dr Teo remarked that his favourite place in the world was America.

He said he’d always been subjected to “the tall poppy syndrome in Australia” because “I am not a wilting flower when it comes to my skills.”

He said that he has been punished “for being good and knowing that I was good.” In contrast in America, “If you are good and you tell people you are good they just love it,” he said.

“We constantly see his never-ending self-proclaimed claims that he is as a neurosurgeon above all others and can do what other brain surgeons can’t. Which raised the obvious question – if he had some super surgical skills that other brain surgeons didn’t, rather than constantly self-promoting his abilities why didn’t he teach them to others?” one doctor told the Herald.

Another said, “It’s not that he’s a bad surgeon from a technical perspective (he’s definitely not) but just because we have the knowledge and equipment to do something doesn’t mean we should - the possibility of a slightly longer life expectancy is not the best outcome in a lot of cases, when you balance the pros and cons of operating on an inoperable tumour.”

Medical entrepreneur lures big-name investors

Meanwhile, the indefatigable Dr Teo has been turning his attention to entrepreneurship.

Charlie Teo, Gretel Packer and Roslyn Packer at the Packer Family and Crown Resorts Foundation announcement of a new $200 million philanthropic fund at Crown Casino in 2014.Credit: Paul Jeffers

In 2019 he and fellow neurosurgeon Mike Sughrue founded Omniscient Neurotechnology, a start-up that aims to provide software to map and analyse the brain’s networks.

“Our software processes MRI scans to provide a detailed map of an individual’s brain networks, specifically tailored to each patient,” Dr Sughrue has said.

Prominent fund manager Will Vicars has not only invested more than $10 million into Omniscient, he is also a director. Philanthropists Gretel Packer and the Vincent Fairfax family have each invested $2 million.

Other investors include Vittoria coffee company co-owner Clelia Cantarella, Gina Rinehart’s daughter Ginia Hancock and property developer Phil Wolanski.

“This is revolutionary, what they’re doing,” Mr Vicars recently enthused to the Australian Financial Review.