Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - December 3, 2008
Dr. Clifford Carrol is accused in the complaint filed Nov. 24 of failing to exercise proper skill and diligence during his work at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, among other allegations. The complaint was made public on Tuesday.
The board also has complaints pending against the clinic's majority owner, Dr. Dipak Desai, and Dr. Eladio Carrera. Both have had their licenses suspended pending hearings early next year.
Louis Ling, the medical board's executive director and special counsel, said no decision had been made whether to suspend Carrol's medical license.
Carrol is identified in his complaint as the gastroenterologist who treated a colonoscopy patient whose hepatitis C was spread to other patients on Sept. 21, 2007. Carrol faces a medical board hearing June 22.
"The allegation is that he was the physician treating the source patient that led to other patients acquiring hepatitis C later that day," Ling said.
Authorities allege that unsafe injection practices including reusing syringes and contaminated vials of anesthesia led to transmission of the incurable liver disease.
The Southern Nevada Health District has linked 114 cases of hepatitis C to the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada and an affiliated clinic, the Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center.
But the public agency says only nine of those cases can be directly linked to treatment at the clinics, which have been closed. It says the other 105 people could have contracted the disease in other ways.
The health district has not attributed any deaths to the outbreak. But the widow of one former patient has filed a lawsuit blaming her 60-year-old husband's hepatitis C diagnosis and death in 2006 on unsafe medical practices at one of the clinics.
More than 100 other former patients have filed civil lawsuits against the clinics and physicians.
The outbreak is the largest ever in Nevada, and it led to the nation's largest patient notification, with some 50,000 former Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada patients and 13,000 former Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center patients notified to get tested for hepatitis B, C and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Officials say no cases of hepatitis B or HIV have been linked to the outbreak.
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