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SCMP Reporter

A dermatologist is facing charges of professional misconduct over allegedly botched wart surgery.

Ip Wing-kin, 48, appeared before the Medical Council yesterday to answer allegations that he inappropriately administered five sessions of cryosurgery to Margaret Lau Kam-ling, a former Cathay Pacific employee, in the latter half of August 1998.

According to Ms Lau's testimony, she approached Dr Ip at his clinic at Argyle Centre, Mongkok, after being referred  by a Cathay staff doctor who discovered a wart on her left index finger.

Dr Ip administered cryosurgery, a treatment that freezes the wart, and a day later the wart developed a blister 'as big as a marble', Ms Lau said.

She returned to Dr Ip after the blister was broken during work.

'The wound was a little wet and dead skin from the blister had fallen and covered the top,' she said.

Over  the following two weeks, Dr Ip carried out four other sessions of cryosurgery.

The wound from the broken blister remained and discharged a yellowish fluid.

Ms Lau  stopped seeing Dr Ip at the beginning of September, when she left Cathay and no longer had medical insurance coverage. It took a further six months, however, for her wound to heal. She has a scar where the wart was.

Ms Lau  filed a complaint to the Medical Council in April 2001 after she saw news of another complaint to the council  against Dr Ip.

The doctor had been found guilty of professional misconduct in March 2001 for misdiagnosing a woman with a sexually transmitted disease when all she had was a relatively harmless swelling. He had allegedly recommended that the woman have  cryosurgery.

Henry Chan Hin-lee, a dermatologist at Queen Mary Hospital and expert witness for the prosecutor, said: 'The fact she developed a blister and an open wound and still received cryosurgery in the two successive weeks is excessive.

'Once there was an open wound [Dr Ip] should have given appropriate dressing and antiseptic cream to the patient.'

Dr Ip also faces a second charge of unreasonably prescribing three weeks  of steroids to Ms Lau.

The council adjourned yesterday's hearing until further notice.



Doctor faces misconduct charge over 'excessive' wart surgery