Dr Charlie Teo's surprising next move after Aussie surgery restrictions
One year after being slapped with restrictions that effectively stopped him from operating in Australia, Dr Charlie Teo is restarting his career overseas.
The neurosurgeon was investigated by Australia’s Health Care Complaints Commission, who last year placed restrictions on the surgeon after they discovered he had been operating on tumours that had been deemed "inoperable".
Now, one of China’s most respected neurosurgeons has thanked Australia for imposing such restrictions because it has allowed her country to benefit from the controversial surgeon’s ability to remove high-risk brain tumours.
Dr Teo has been operating regularly in China including on high profile VIPs, and at least eight other countries around the world, according to reports from the Sunday Telegraph.
An investigation has found Dr Teo has operated on 150 patients, with many of them being from Australia, in China, Spain, Germany, India, Switzerland, Brazil, Peru, South Africa, and Nepal since the restrictions effectively stopped him from operating in Australia.
In an interview from Beijing, Professor Ling Feng, Deputy Director of the China International Neuroscience Institute, said she is “not worried” about the restrictions imposed on Dr Teo a year ago for unsatisfactory conduct.
“I took a careful look into what happened over there. I don’t think it should be imputed to Charlie’s neglect of care and passion for the patients,” Professor Ling told the Sunday Telegraph.
“It is just a different view of the indications for surgery. Similar cases occur across the world. Instead, I ‘thank’ Australia for the restrictions on Charlie, which gave me the opportunity to work with him.”
In the past year, patients have travelled from Australia, Romania, Britain, Saudi Arabia, France, Indonesia, and Singapore to have Dr Teo operate.
Of those surgeries Dr Teo’s logbook documents one death, one “poor” outcome, three “fair outcomes”, 20 “good outcomes” and 145 cases have been documented as “excellent”.
Dr Teo says his results are better than ever and he feels terrible for patients in his own country that he can’t help, but hopes that he may one day be able to return to Australian operating rooms to help patients.
“All it would take is one sensible and brave person in one hospital somewhere in Australia to change the status quo,” Dr Teo said.
“Just one person to sit back and go ‘okay he might be an a**hole, he might be into money, he might be a bit of a cowboy, he might be all the things the media have said he might be, but the fact is that patients, Australian patients, some need him and he does operations that other people don’t do and most of those outcomes are good so what about we just drop the politics and allow him to operate in Australia?"
“That’s all it would take … some common sense for the greater good, not for his sake but for the sake of patients.”
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