Eleanor StoneAn NHS surgeon described by expert witnesses as performing an operation "not known to man" has been permanently erased from the UK medical register. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service confirmed on 4 August 2026 that Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman, a locum surgeon who worked at Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester, was struck off following findings of serious misconduct relating to a catastrophically botched emergency bowel procedure carried out in August 2020.
The case, which left a patient in uncontrollable pain for three weeks before a second surgeon corrected the error, has returned NHS surgical negligence to national headlines. But for the tens of thousands of patients harmed by preventable medical errors each year in England, the more pressing question is practical: what are your rights, and how long do you have to exercise them?
What makes this case particularly striking is that the failings did not end with the surgery. Dr Abdel Rahman subsequently broke a practice restriction order imposed by the MPTS in July 2021, applying for and securing a locum post at a clinic in Ireland in February 2022 without disclosing the restriction. The tribunal's decision to erase him from the register reflects not just a catastrophic technical failure, but a pattern of conduct the panel found incompatible with continued medical practice.
What the Tribunal Found
The facts established by the MPTS are stark. On 25 August 2020, Dr Abdel Rahman performed emergency bowel surgery on a patient at Royal Oldham Hospital. During the procedure, he wrongly connected the patient's small intestine to the stomach, rather than to the correct section of bowel. This created what the tribunal described as a "closed loop": intestinal contents leaving the stomach were re-deposited back into it with no exit, causing severe and escalating harm.
Patient A was left in uncontrollable pain, vomiting repeatedly, and without a bowel movement for three weeks. A second emergency operation, performed by a different surgeon, was required to correct the damage. A former consultant general and colorectal surgeon, serving as the GMC's expert witness, described the technique as "not known to man" and classified the error as "as bad as it gets" within surgical practice.
According to the MPTS hearing record, Dr Abdel Rahman also failed to respond adequately to clinical concerns raised post-operatively. The erasure order — the most serious sanction available — reflected both the severity of the original error and the later breach of regulatory restrictions.
The Scale of NHS Surgical Harm
Dr Abdel Rahman's case sits at the extreme end of the spectrum, but surgical errors are a persistent feature of NHS care. NHS Resolution, the body that manages clinical negligence claims on behalf of NHS trusts, recorded more than 13,000 new claims in the 2024-25 financial year. Payouts for clinical negligence exceeded £2.8 billion in the same period, the bulk of it relating to surgical, obstetric, and emergency care failures.
Yet research by Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA), the UK's leading patient safety charity, consistently shows that the majority of patients harmed by preventable errors never make a formal complaint or legal claim. Many do not realise the error was avoidable. Others are unaware a claims process exists. A large number are deterred by the mistaken belief that pursuing a case against the NHS requires substantial upfront legal costs or years of adversarial courtroom proceedings.
That perception is largely inaccurate. Clinical negligence solicitors in England and Wales routinely work on a No Win No Fee basis, meaning no upfront cost and no legal fees if the claim does not succeed. Because all NHS trusts in England are indemnified through the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST), there is a structured, well-resourced process for handling claims — and NHS Resolution data shows that over 98% of cases are resolved without a court trial.
Your Rights as an NHS Patient
UK law provides several specific protections for patients who believe they were harmed by a surgical error. These rights exist independently of any decision to pursue legal action.
The Duty of Candour, which became a statutory obligation for NHS trusts in November 2015, requires trusts to acknowledge when a patient safety incident has occurred, to apologise in person and in writing, and to explain what happened and what steps are being taken to prevent recurrence. If you have not received this communication following a procedure you believe went wrong, you can request it formally from the trust's Patient Experience or Patient Safety team.
You are entitled to a complete copy of your medical records under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. The trust must respond within 30 days and cannot charge a fee. Medical records form the evidentiary foundation of any negligence assessment and should be requested as early as possible, before memories fade and documentation is archived.
If you submit a formal complaint to the NHS trust, the trust must acknowledge it within three working days and provide a substantive response within 40 working days. If the response is unsatisfactory, you can refer the matter to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) as the final point of escalation outside the courts.
Finally, you have the right to seek independent medical assessment of whether your care met the expected standard. As we examined in our earlier piece on what duty of care means for NHS patients in the UK, the legal test requires establishing both that a breach of the standard occurred and that the breach directly caused the harm you suffered. An independent expert report is the tool that makes this case.
If This Happened to You: What Compensation Looks Like
To understand what a surgical negligence claim actually involves in financial terms, consider a scenario directly analogous to the Royal Oldham case.
You are admitted to an NHS hospital for emergency bowel surgery. The operating surgeon makes an anatomical error — connecting sections of your digestive system that should never be joined. You spend three weeks in hospital without normal bowel function, require a second major corrective operation, and are discharged with a restricted diet and recurring abdominal pain that persists for more than twelve months post-discharge.
Under the Judicial College guidelines for general damages in England and Wales (updated in 2022 and in force for current claims), moderately severe bowel injury with ongoing symptoms attracts an award of between £38,000 and £78,000 for pain and suffering alone. If your extended hospitalisation prevented you from working for ten weeks at the UK median salary of approximately £35,000 per year, lost earnings would add a further £6,700. Recurring medical expenses — follow-up appointments, dietary adjustments, specialist referrals — could account for an additional £4,000 to £8,000 over the following year.
If your situation follows this profile, a total claim value of between £50,000 and £90,000 is plausible. Under a standard No Win No Fee agreement, your solicitor's success fee is capped at 25% of damages recovered. On an £80,000 settlement, you receive £60,000 net. If the claim does not succeed, After the Event insurance — arranged by the solicitor before the case proceeds — covers your exposure to the opponent's legal costs. You pay nothing either way.
What determines whether you can even bring that claim is timing. The Limitation Act 1980 sets a three-year window, starting from the date of knowledge — that is, the date you first knew or reasonably ought to have known that the harm you suffered was caused by negligence. In cases where the connection between a surgical error and lasting damage only emerged during a corrective procedure or subsequent diagnosis, the clock begins from that later date, not from the date of the original operation. Missing this deadline removes the right to claim permanently. If you are approaching the three-year mark, legal advice should not wait.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. If you believe you have suffered surgical negligence, consult a qualified medical negligence solicitor.
How to Start the Process
Most medical negligence solicitors offer a free initial consultation to assess whether a case meets the threshold for a viable claim. At this stage, a rough timeline of events and a brief description of the harm suffered are sufficient. The solicitor will help obtain the complete medical record, commission an independent expert report on the standard of care, and draft a formal Letter of Claim to the NHS trust.
Under the Pre-Action Protocol for the Resolution of Clinical Disputes, the trust then has four months to respond, setting out whether it accepts or disputes the allegations. This pre-action stage is specifically designed to encourage settlement without litigation — and in the large majority of cases, that is exactly what happens.
For cases involving harm that occurred more than three years ago, a solicitor can advise on whether limitation exceptions apply. These include cases where the patient was a minor at the time of the incident, or where the patient lacked mental capacity during the period following the harm.
The case of Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman is, by any measure, an extreme one. A procedure described as "not known to man" and a pattern of post-incident conduct that breached regulatory orders are not what patients expect from the NHS. But the rights the case illustrates — to an honest explanation, to your medical records, to independent assessment, and to compensation if negligence is established — apply to any patient harmed by surgical error, whatever the degree. ExpertZoom connects you with qualified legal professionals across the UK who can assess your situation in confidence, without obligation and at no upfront cost.
