Neurosurgeon who had sex with patient avoids erasure after tribunal hears it would be “disaster” for patients

A consultant neurosurgeon who had sex with a patient and gave her painkillers when she threatened to reveal the relationship has been suspended for eight months, after a tribunal heard that striking him off would be “nothing short of a disaster for the people of Wales.”1Chirag Patel, the only surgeon in Wales qualified to perform all parts of neuromodulation surgery, carried out spinal disc operations twice in 2019 on a woman named only as Patient A.After the second operation she asked for his phone number in case symptoms recurred, which he provided.A month later, in September 2019, she called him, and the two began a personal relationship that soon turned sexual. At one point he sent her nude images of himself.Patel told the medical practitioners tribunal that he considered her to be no longer his patient at this point. But in January 2020, while the relationship was still sexual, she…