Eljamel patient left with life-changing injuries still waiting for answers over missing surgical notes

A patient left with life changing injuries at the hands of disgraced surgeon Sam Eljamel is yet to hear from a health chief who promised to look for his missing surgical notes six months ago.

David Vile, from Kirriemuir, was operated on by the former Head of Neurosurgery in 2007 and 2009.

Eljamel is thought to have harmed dozens of patients during his 18 years working for NHS Tayside.

He was suspended in 2013 before removing himself from the GMC register the following year. He is now working as a surgeon in Libya.

The second spinal operation left him with no feeling in his left leg and unable to stand up straight.

David, who lives in constant pain and takes a cocktail of medication, has been unable to work since.

The record of his surgery is missing from his personal medical records.

He had hoped the information would be found within theatre log books, but 40 of these records were destroyed by NHS Tayside in July 2025, despite a do not destroy order being issued by Lord Weir, Chair of the Public Inquiry.

Mr Vile met with NHS Tayside medical director Dr James Cotton at a meeting between harmed patients and health board executives at the Apex Hotel in Dundee in February this year.

After the frank meeting, Mr Vile said that Dr Cotton approached him and they had a discussion about his missing surgical notes.

“We talked about the missing information and he said he would go back and have a look, find out if that information was anywhere else and that was February 23 and here we are, explained Mr Vile.

“I have written to him twice now and I’ve had nothing from him, nothing at all.

“It’s disappointing and frustrating but it’s just extremely rude. To actually offer to help me and then nothing materialises.

“I wrote to him in July, I never got a response and I wrote to him at the end of August asking more questions and wanting a more comprehensive answer and here we are, nothing.

“We were told with the logbooks being destroyed, that that information would be in our records. It’s not in my records.

“I don’t know what time my operation started but I was in surgery for an awfully long time for a 40 to 80 minute procedure and I have asked for that information.”

The lack of details about his surgery has left him unable to provide all the information requested to have his care looked at in an independent clinical review, which is running in parallel to the public inquiry, which started hearing evidence this week.

A spokesperson for NHS Tayside said, “We are in the final stages of a reconciliation of patient health records looking at the information we hold about individual patients and how that relates to information that may be contained in theatre logbooks. On completion, we will contact patients directly to advise them of the outcome.”

“Not everyone has got surgical notes in their records and certainly not the kind of records that would be held in the theatre logbooks because that would say who the surgeons were, who the nurses were, everyone in that theatre would be listed and I have no idea who was there and what was done to me.

In an interview with STV News in August 2026, Nicky Connor, NHS Tayside Chief Executive admitted that key evidence might have been lost with the destruction of the logbooks.

During her evidence to the inquiry on Wednesday, Ms Connor apologised for the loss of the logbooks, but said she would not resign.