Second consultant declined to meet inquiry

A second consultant obstetrician, in addition to Dr Michael Neary, carried out a significant number of hysterectomies at Our …

A second consultant obstetrician, in addition to Dr Michael Neary, carried out a significant number of hysterectomies at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, the inquiry found.

The other consultant who carried out the significant number of peripartum hysterectomies is named in the report as Dr Finian Lynch, who is still working at the hospital but is on leave at the moment.

The report said he carried out 40 peripartum hysterectomies between 1982 and 1998.

But the report said the number of hysterectomies he carried out, while significant, was "not in the same league" as the number carried out by Dr Neary, who had carried out 129 between 1974 and 1998.

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"No one in the hospital, either in the past or now, expressed any concern about Dr Lynch's rate of hysterectomies," the report said.

It added: "There was a difference in profile between Dr Neary's patients and those of Dr Lynch. Analysis of patient details indicates that Dr Lynch's patients tended to be older women and of higher parity (women who had had more pregnancies)."

The author of the report, Judge Maureen Harding Clark, also noted that Dr Lynch had not given evidence to her inquiry.

She said: "We would have welcomed an interview with Dr Finian Lynch."

She also said he was originally quite willing to speak to the inquiry.

"We suggested deferring the meeting until a later date, as we were aware that his wife was gravely ill. When he was invited to speak to us following his wife's death, he declined for legal reasons, which I accept," she wrote.

"He responded in a limited fashion to our queries and we remain at a disadvantage without his full co-operation," she added.

The report said Dr Lynch was unaware of Dr Neary's rate of hysterectomy and had no concerns about his ability or practices until made aware by media reports.

"He had supported Dr Neary fully when the complaints were first made and at that time saw no substance in the complaints," the report said.

Dr Lynch was appointed to the Drogheda hospital in 1982.

Asked yesterday if she had any concerns about the fact that another doctor at the hospital had also performed a significant number of hysterectomies, Minister for Health Mary Harney said she understood there was an investigation of his practice and no wrongdoing or no malpractice was found.

The Fitness to Practise Committee of the Medical Council inquired into a complaint against Dr Lynch in 2004. It was from a woman who alleged that her womb and ovaries were unnecessarily removed when she attended the hospital for a urinary procedure in 1995.

The woman made her complaint by letter to the Medical Council in 1999 but the council lost her letter of complaint and her allegations were therefore not followed up for some time. The fitness to practise inquiry found Dr Lynch not guilty of professional misconduct.

The Medical Council, when it reported on its fitness to practise inquiry into Dr Neary in 2003, referred to the fact that "it was clear from the statistics that Dr Neary was by no means alone in having a high Caesarean hysterectomy rate" at the hospital.