Cosmetic surgery firm sued by its patients wound up

A COSMETIC surgery company which is the subject of litigation from dozens of its former patients has debts of more than €1.7 million, it has emerged.

Advanced Cosmetic Surgery (ACS) Ltd, which was wound up yesterday, has cash assets of just €154,452 following the sale of the company to UK property developers, the Artisan Construction Group, earlier this year. It is owed almost €80,000.

The assets of ACS, which is Ireland's biggest private provider of plastic surgery, were sold as a going concern to the group. It has clinics in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Belfast.

Liquidator Liam Dowdall, of BDO Simpson Xavier, who was appointed yesterday following a meeting of creditors in Dublin, will be investigating the insurance arrangement.

It was claimed at the meeting that patients with outstanding legal actions against it would have to sue the surgeons who carried out the operations as they were the ones with the clinical indemnity insurance.

A committee of inspection, formed from five of the creditors, has been set up to review the insurance issue and also the sale of the company.

There are at least a dozen cases listed for hearing and several others pending arising from the operation of the clinic.

Last year a woman died during gastric surgery at the clinic in Dublin and the surgeon who carried out the operation, Jerome Manuceau, was suspended by the Irish Medical Council pending a practice hearing.

The company denies liability for the death.

ACS owes €489,088 to the Revenue Commissioners, more than three times its current assets, so unsecured creditors are unlikely to receive any dividend from the realisation of the assets.

The biggest unsecured creditor is Beauchamps, its former solicitors. They are owed €101,390.35. The company's heavy advertising budget is reflected in the money outstanding to other creditors which include: Google Adwords (€82,577.35), Golden Pages (€63,337.76), Dublin 98FM (€47,432), FM104 (€33,224.51) and Social & Personal magazine (€10,890).

The company's last published accounts in 2006 showed a €140,000 pre-tax profit but they also revealed historic liabilities of €2.4 million.

 'I know I will never be all right'

ANNE HAD an abdominoplasty or "tummy tuck" and breast enlargement operation carried out on her 48th birthday in January 2005 at the Advanced Surgery Clinic in Galway.

The next day she developed a serious hospital-acquired infection and had to have emergency surgery on her stomach.

Anne, who has asked that her identity not be revealed, now has multiple adhesions (scar tissue) in both bowels, a lump in the abdominal area and fluid on both sides of her abdomen.

She has been told by doctors that she will need potentially dangerous abdominal surgery, which is not carried out in Ireland, to repair scar tissue which is causing her small bowel to constrict.

She has since had almost a dozen procedures at ACS clinics to correct the initial procedure.

Anne, a clinical nurse who has only been able to work intermittently since the operation, said: "I have been in constant pain for nine months out of every year. I have problems eating and going to the toilet and I don't sleep at night.

"I know that, even with corrective surgery, I will never be all right again."

She has lodged proceedings in the High Court in Dublin against ACS Ltd and the surgeon who carried out the operation.

There are more than a dozen cases listed on the courts website and at least five others in the pipeline, including hers.