Toronto, Canada – 19th April: As medical director of Canada’s highest-profile weight-loss surgery clinic, Patrick Yau had impressive stats.
He says he performed over 6,000 gastric-band operations at Slimband Inc. and elsewhere, more than any other Canadian surgeon. And the company seemed until recently to be booming, its glossy website full of glowing patient testimonials, its billboards showing off satisfied customers.
But behind the scenes, Yau’s work – including allegedly lax screening and scant post-operative treatment – landed him increasingly in hot water with the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Those troubles – most of them kept secret by the regulator – came to a head Wednesday with a discipline hearing that saw Yau, 48, suspended three months for substandard care of patients, including one who died alone in a Calgary hotel room a day and a half after his operation.
And lawyers at the college hearing revealed that Slimband itself is no more, having quietly closed its doors last month.
“Your acts have not only disgraced yourself, but the profession as a whole,” said Dr. Eric Stanton, chair of the college’s discipline committee. “Patients place great trust in their physician … You have violated that trust and as a result put your patients in harm’s way.”
Yau’s lawyer, Eric Pellegrino, said he and his client would not comment on the case.
The hearing was told he had successfully completed two remedial education programs mandated by the College earlier – including one-on-one “coaching” in 2015 – and feels deep remorse for his actions.
Yau pleaded “no contest” — as opposed to not guilty — to charges of failing to meet standards of the profession, and in exchange the College withdrew a charge of incompetence. Both sides agreed on the penalty.
He had been cautioned — a lower form of censure — three times before for similar issues stemming from a “very troubling” succession of patient complaints. Many alleged he gave short shrift to severe pain and other problems after surgery.
As is the College’s policy, it made none of that history public, though a patient complainant released one of the previous rulings to the National Post.
With extensive advertising on TV and the Internet, the Toronto-based Slimband was the most visible of a string of private clinics across the country that offer weight-loss operations, and has described itself as the busiest.
Such facilities present an alternative to bariatric surgery in the public system that tends to have lengthy weight lists and is provided only to very obese people.
Yau has said his thousands of operations usually brought “excellent results.”
A 2012 National Post report, however, quoted malpractice lawsuits and former Slimband employees as questioning whether patients signed on following a high-pressure sales effort were adequately screened, sufficiently warned about possible complications or provided sufficient post-operative care.
The company said at the time that patients are fully informed of the risks and receive post-op service that is the best in the industry. It also cited customer surveys that suggested the vast majority of patients were satisfied with the results.
Nevertheless, the Slimband clinic closed on March 22, Elisabeth Widner, the College’s lawyer, said Wednesday, without elaborating.
Calls for comment to the company office went unanswered this week. One of two cases highlighted in Wednesday’s hearing involved a 38-year-old man from High Prairie, Alta., suffering from type-one diabetes, who was released a day after his January 2012 operation. He left without his blood-glucose levels being “verified or recorded” – despite abnormally high readings the night before – and never saw Yau after the operation.
The patient flew back to Alberta that day and was found dead in a hotel room the next morning, the hearing heard. The Alberta medical examiner said he died from bacterial meningitis and diabetic ketoacidosis, a complication that sometimes occurs after bariatric surgery.
As the clinic’s medical director, Yau should have ensured that appropriate procedures were in place before his patients were discharged, an expert retained by the College concluded.
In a 2013 case considered at the hearing, he tried to perform weight-loss surgery on a 61-year-old woman – even though she had a healthy body-mass index and had undergone two previous bariatric operations.
Experts say such procedures, which can have complex physical and emotional side effects, should be reserved only for the morbidly obese.
Like most of the other private clinics, Slimband implanted a liquid-filled band around the stomach, creating a small pocket and a narrow opening to the rest of the organ. The pocket fills with food quickly, making the patient feel full much sooner than normal.
The firm said in 2014 that Yau had resigned, but several patients told the Post they found him still working there as recently as last year.
Source: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/slimband-doctor-suspended-for-three-months-for-inadequate-care-of-patients-who-had-gastric-banding-surgery