A consultant facing allegations of poor professional performance after a child in his care had the wrong procedure carried out told a Medical Council fitness-to-practise committee today he could not have been expected to remember what procedure the two-and-a-half year old required.
Prof Martin Corbally, who was a paediatric surgeon at Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin when the incident happened in 2010, said he had "no way of knowing" what procedure should have been carried out on Baby X when she attended for surgery weeks after he had seen her in outpatients.
In April 2010, Baby X from Co Meath had a tongue tie operation, a lingual frenulectomy releasing the fold of skin beneath her tongue when what she needed was an upper labial frenulectomy, to release the fold of skin attaching her upper lip to her gum.
The after effects of the mistake included constant drooling, her mother had said, and her tongue hung out of her mouth. But she subsequently made a full recovery.
The girl was under the care of Prof Corbally, who had delegated the procedure to a registrar and is facing four allegations of poor professional performance. These include that he incorrectly described the procedure needed by her on her notes and delegated the procedure to a junior without communicating adequately.
He had correctly diagnosed the child's problem but had mistakenly described the operation as being on her "upper lingual frenulum" in a note to her GP. And he had described the procedure as "tongue tie – upper frenulum" on her admission note.
Now chief of staff at King Hamad University Hospital in Bahrain, Prof Corbally today gave evidence via video link. He told the inquiry if the procedure had been transcribed properly by administration from his admission note into the computer system he would have remembered it on the day of the operation. Instead only the words tongue-tie had been transcribed.
He also said on the morning of the surgery he had been very busy and had three patients in intensive care.
The case continues tomorrow.
