Charlie Teo’s next move after celebrity neurosurgeon was banished from Australia

Charlie Teo has treated more than 150 patients overseas and has won praise in China after the embattled neurosurgeon was expelled from Australia.

Dr Teo was banned from performing surgeries in Australia without written consent in July last year after he was found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct by the Medical Professional Standards Committee.

The decision was made following findings by the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) which found that Dr Teo had failed to properly inform two of his patients about the risks of ‘experimental’ surgeries from which they did not recover.

Dr Teo was known for performing surgeries that other doctors would not perform on patients sentenced to death for “inadmissible” brain tumors.

Because similar bans existed in the United States and Singapore, the neurosurgeon moved to China shortly after the HCCC findings, where he was approved to perform surgery.

Since then he has treated more than 150 patients, including VIPs, in China, Spain, Germany, India, Switzerland, Brazil, Peru, South Africa and Nepal.

Dr Teo’s logbook states that the operations resulted in one death, one ‘poor’ outcome, three ‘fair outcomes’, 20 ‘good outcomes’ and 145 ‘excellent’ outcomes.

Some of these patients have travelled from Australia to Australia to be treated by the neurosurgeon, who is often the only doctor trying to save their lives.

Dr Teo said he still wanted to treat patients on home soil and that all he needed was “one sensible and courageous person in one hospital”.

“Just one person sitting back and saying, ‘Okay, he might be a jerk, he might be after money, he might be a bit of a cowboy,'”

“The fact is that patients, Australian patients, need him and he does operations that other people don’t do,” he told the

“Most of those outcomes are good, so what if we just drop the politics and let him operate in Australia?” he told the Sunday Telegraph.

“That’s all it takes… a little bit of common sense for the greater good, not for himself, but for the patients.”

Deputy Director of the China International Neuroscience Institute, Professor Ling Feng, hit out at the HCCC by “thanking Australia for the restrictions on Charlie”.

Professor Ling said forcing the neurosurgeon to treat patients abroad meant she was given “the opportunity to work with him”.

“I’ve looked closely at what happened there (in Australia),” she said.

“I don’t think it’s due to Charlie’s neglect of care and passion for the patients.”

Last year, the HCCC concluded that the surgeon decided to operate on two patients ‘where the risk of surgery outweighed the possible benefits’.

The committee found that he had failed to obtain informed consent from both women prior to surgery, had charged an unjustified $35,000 fee, and had spoken inappropriately to the patients and their families.

Dr Teo was banned from performing surgeries in Australia without written consent in July last year after being found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct.

In its 112-page decision, the committee concluded that Dr Teo had “failed to exercise appropriate judgement” in going ahead with what it considered a “risky and inappropriate” operation on a 41-year-old Perth woman.

“Surgery in this situation is not recommended or performed by the majority of the physician’s colleagues, nor by a responsible minority of surgeons,” the statement said.

‘The procedure was not supported by the literature and the practitioner had an overriding ethical duty in his professional capacity to refuse surgery.’

The committee found that Dr Teo’s attitude to the surgery and his reasoning for it were ‘substantially experimental’ and that this was the type of surgery that should be performed in a clinical trial setting or subject to other ethical review.

During an operation on a 66-year-old patient, it turned out that he had performed ‘an operation other than that proposed’, namely a right frontal lobectomy instead of a resection of the tumor.

The surgery ultimately led to “an unwarranted and excessive removal of normally functioning brain.”

During the consultation with the woman, Dr Teo used inappropriate language and told the patient: ‘If you don’t have this operation by Tuesday, you’ll be fucking dead by Friday’.

The woman was also told: ‘What the f*** are you crying about? I’m here to cure you, you should be happy’ and ‘Brain tumours are the best f***ing way to die’.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CELEBRITY SURGEON CHARLIE TEO

December 24, 1957 – Charlie Teo born in Sydney, the son of Chinese-Singaporean immigrants

1981 – Graduates from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Science in Sydney after attending the elite Scots College in Sydney

Since 1982 – worked in general neurosurgery at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital before moving to the US for 10 years, working in Dallas, Texas and Arkansas, where he became an associate professor of neurosurgery and head of the department of paediatric neurosurgery

The 90’s – Teo returns to Australia to work at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney and establishes the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation and the Charlie Teo Foundation

2000s – His fame spreads and he becomes a regular guest on TV and on the social pages of newspapers

2011 – He is awarded the Member of the Order of Australia for his services to medicine as a neurosurgeon

Charlie Teo returned to Australia in the 1990s to work at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney and founded the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation and the Charlie Teo Foundation

2019 – Urologist Henry Woo has publicly raised concerns about Mr Teo’s work and the number of GoFundMe campaigns raising money to finance his surgeries, prompting a series of newspaper articles, TV investigations and complaints

2021 – The NSW Medical Council has held a special hearing into Mr Teo, which banned him from performing surgery without special written approval from a senior neurosurgeon. He says he was denied that permission because of the onerous restrictions on the approving surgeon.

August 2021 – The Healthcare Complaints Commission launches an investigation into two more complaints

September 2022 – HCCC hearing was scheduled to take place but has been postponed

October 2022 – Three new complaints have been filed against Mr Teo with the HCCC

February 13, 2023 – Dr. Teo was confronted with five complaints at the HCCC

July 12, 2023 – Accused of unsatisfactory professional conduct