The management of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, has called on the Medical and Dental Practitioners’ Investigation Panel to investigate the alleged professional misconduct of a Lagos-based cosmetic surgeon and owner of MedContour Services Ltd, Dr Anu Adepoju.
In a petition dated June 11, 2020 and signed by LUTH’s Director of Legal Services, O. O. Olajide, the hospital accused Adepoju of professional misconduct during a surgery she performed on a woman identified as Nneka Onwuzuligbo at her facility.
LUTH attached an affidavit to the petition which said Adepoju referred the late Onwuzuligbo from her facility to LUTH on January 3, 2019, on the pretext that she was being referred from the General Hospital, Odan, Lagos Island.
The victim, according to the affidavit deposed to by a consultant surgeon, Prof. Andrew Ugburo, was presented to LUTH with severe respiratory distress and septicaemia with infected surgical wounds.
Part of the affidavit read: “Details of the surgical intervention subsequently received from Dr Adepoju (Exhibit A) showed that she (Onwuzuligbo) had liposuction of the anterior abdomen, back, flanks and arms with fat transfer to the buttocks and hips. The surgery was done under spinal anaesthesia. The tumescent technique was used where three litres of fluid were infused into the patient and five litres of fluid were aspirated. She had two pints of blood transfused before presentation on account of anaemia.
“The account given about the patient further had it that there was no previous history of similar presentation in past surgery of myomectomy done three years before the liposuction and fat grafting. It was revealed that on the second day after the surgery, she was noticed to have persistent foul-smelling discharge from all the surgical sites.”
Ugburo further deposed that the victim developed multiple organ failure of cardiac, respiratory (Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome) and renal failures and had a cardiac arrest on the 31st day of admission, adding that after cardio-pulmonary resuscitation was unsuccessful, the victim was certified dead around 9am on February 3, 2019.
Adepoju, however, told The PUNCH that Onwuzuligbo only had pneumonia when she was referred to LUTH.
