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.
Neurosurgeon Dr Charlie Teo (pictured) has been forced to perform risky surgeries abroad on patients with ‘inaresectable’ brain tumours after being restricted in Australia
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’.