A British liver, spleen and pancreas surgeon is getting cut down to size.
Dr. Simon Bramhall has pleaded guilty to charges of assault after admitting that he used an argon beam to carve his initials into two of his patients' livers.
The graffiti was discovered by a separate doctor who was conducting a followup appointment with one of the patients.
That doctor found an "SB" scrawled onto an organ.
Elizabeth Reid of the Crown Prosecution Service, said the doctor's actions were an abuse of doctor/patient trust:
“It was an intentional application of unlawful force to a patient whilst anaesthetised,” she said. “His acts in marking the livers of those patients, in a wholly unnecessary way, were deliberate and conscious acts on his part.”
Argon beams are designed to stop livers bleeding during operations and to highlight an area due to be worked on in surgery. Marks left by argon are not thought to impair an organ’s functions and usually disappear by themselves.