Surgeon struck off for failing breast patient
A Medical Council fitness-to-practise committee found Marco Loiacono, aged 35, guilty of misconduct on a number of charges in relation to his treatment of Kate Murray, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
Ms Murray, aged 25, developed a severe infection in both breasts and became seriously ill following an operation on March 15, 2008, at the Cosmedico Clinic in Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow.
The committee found that Dr Loiacono, who did not attend the hearing, failed to provide Ms Murray with adequate post-operative care.
Ms Murray said she was still in great pain when her mother, Catherine Hammond, returned from a holiday two weeks after the operation. “My dressings were leaking this fluid and my mum felt it was just not right,” she said.
Ms Murray said she had both implants removed at the clinic on March 31 by Mr Loiacono after he advised her to have the left one removed.
Ms Murray said the pain returned and she felt extremely ill on April 3.
A local doctor arranged to have her admitted to St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, where she remained a patient for four weeks and underwent nine surgical procedures.
Consultant plastic surgeon Peter Meagher, said he met Ms Murray at the request of the Medical Council, and said the reconstruction surgery she still needed would be incredibly difficult.
“She has been horribly physically scared for life and mentally scarred,” he said.
Breast surgery consultant at St Vincent’s, Denis Evoy, said Ms Murray was “just a step away” from developing a serious flesh eating disease.
Ms Murray said she wrote a letter of complaint to the Medical Council on January 30, 2010, after reading media reports about Dr Loiacono.
“I realised there was something very wrong in how I was treated by Dr Loiacono,” she said. “I felt he never listened to me and he did not understand my pain.”
In February 2010, the doctor, now believed to be working at a cosmetic clinic in Italy, was found guilty of professional misconduct by a Medical Council fitness-to-practise inquiry for failing to arrange for adequate post-operative care of a woman at the now defunct Advanced Cosmetic Surgery in Dublin in October 2006.
Following the hearing, it was recommended that the doctor undertook a development programme.
The committee recommended that the Medical Council take steps to ensure that all clinics performing cosmetic surgery attained a standard of pre- and post-operative care, as defined by the council.
