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Locum emergency consultant is struck off for series of missed diagnoses

BMJ 2023; 382 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p2196 (Published 22 September 2023) Cite this as: BMJ 2023;382:p2196
  1. Clare Dyer
  1. The BMJ

A locum consultant in emergency medicine has been struck off the UK medical register for a series of missed diagnoses, one of which led to a preventable death, and for dishonestly altering a patient’s medical records in an effort to conceal his errors.

Mohamed El-Sakka missed an “obvious” fracture of the femur, a serious internal bleed with clear and unequivocal symptoms, an injury to the cervical spine after a road crash, and, with fatal consequences, a pulmonary embolism. In all four cases he discharged or sought to discharge the patients from the emergency department at Lincoln County Hospital when they clearly needed further treatment and investigation, a medical practitioners tribunal found.

El-Sakka, who worked part time as a medicolegal expert in personal injury cases, was also found to have inadequately examined a patient for a medical report and to have allowed a signed report that contained errors to be sent to the patient’s solicitors without checking it.

The patients were not identified by …

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