Hearing on complaints against eye doctor to continue

Molly Ball

Monday, Feb. 28, 2005 | 8:53 a.m.

The state Board of Osteopathic Medicine began hearing testimony over the weekend on malpractice allegations against a Henderson eye doctor who claims he is the victim of trumped-up charges.

The proceedings went into the evening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday but did not finish, according to Elizabeth Trosper of the MassMedia public-relations firm, publicist for the accused, Dr. J. Daniel Carpenter. The hearing is to continue at a later date.

In her opening statement, the prosecutor, Chief Deputy Attorney General Charlotte Bible, said the evidence presented would show that "Dr. Carpenter has committed repeated malpractice constituting gross malpractice and has engaged in unprofessional conduct, meriting sanctions by this board."

The 28 charges against Carpenter, an osteopathic ophthalmologist who continues to practice, include allegations that botched and unnecessary surgeries left four patients with diminished vision. He is also accused of fraudulent billing.

If the board decides Carpenter is guilty, his license could be suspended, revoked or made conditional.

Bible said Carpenter would try to defend himself by blaming his patients, other doctors, his equipment and other factors for the bad results. But in fact, she said, the blame was on Carpenter's own "lack of judgment, clinical skill and lack of ethics."

But Carpenter's lawyer said the doctor gave a "glimmer of hope" to patients for whom eyesight improvement was a long shot.

"There is no guarantee in any medical procedure that the treatment will succeed, but to these patients, it was worth a try," attorney Melanie Porter said.

The allegations against Carpenter all came from other ophthalmologists, not from angry patients, Porter claimed.

"They have grasped at straws to try and put something together to make it look like Dr. Carpenter has done something wrong," she said. "This case is very simple. Dr. Carpenter has done nothing wrong."

The board members, most them osteopaths but none of them ophthalmologists, were sifting through conflicting testimony about the "standard of care" for delicate procedures with which they were largely unfamiliar -- laser surgeries with tolerances of fractions of a millimeter.

A Las Vegas eye surgeon, Dr. Helga Pizio, testified on Friday about two patients who were referred to her after Carpenter allegedly bungled their cataract surgeries.

One patient, Renee Collier, ended up with a torn retina, probably caused by cataract fragments that fell into the back of the eye during surgery, Pizio said. In Carpenter's written report of the surgery, he stated that equipment had malfunctioned and that the patient's squirming during surgery led to problems.

"I personally have never had a case where the chamber collapsed to the point of breaking the posterior capsule," Pizio said.

In addition, she said, Carpenter should have realized that the surgical complications were potentially serious and should have referred Collier to a retina specialist immediately. But Collier did not see a specialist for six days.

The result for Collier was that "the eye that I did cataract surgery on was 20 /20; the eye that Dr. Carpenter did cataract surgery on was count fingers at six feet," Pizio said. "If that were her only eye, she would be legally blind."

Another patient, Margarita Fleites, came to Pizio with a scarred cornea and a blood-filled chamber at the back of the eye after Carpenter operated on her cataracts. Fleites could perceive light but could not see a hand waved in front of her face.

"Scarring like this could only have come from surgery, and the only surgery she had was cataract surgery with Dr. Carpenter," Pizio said.

However, under cross examination Pizio acknowledged that both women had severe health problems. Collier had had a stroke, a heart attack and a kidney transplant and suffered from high blood pressure. Fleites was a wheelchair-bound paraplegic suffering from diabetes, multiple sclerosis, anxiety and high blood pressure.

Pizio also said that, according to Carpenter's records, Fleites could barely see before the surgery, so the surgery did not worsen her vision.

"It's hard to get much worse, so no, it didn't get any worse," Pizio said.

The complaint faulted Carpenter for not administering a certain test before performing surgery. However, Pizio testified that she does not "put a lot of stock" in that test or administer it herself.

The complaint also states that Carpenter should have consulted with a retina specialist prior to operating on Fleites, but Pizio disagreed.

"I would not agree that that would be necessary," she said.

But Pizio was vehement in her outrage at Carpenter's alleged acts, saying her conscience compelled her to file the complaint despite the unseemliness of faulting a fellow physician.

"I feel it's been my duty to bring this forward," she said.