A consultant neurologist, Dr Lukmon Ogunjimi, has refuted allegations of misdiagnosing a patient with a neurological condition, Mofeyintoluwa Abiodun, at the Federal Medical Centre, Abeokuta, Ogun State.
He maintained that he could not delve into details for ethical reasons and would only go as far as to address the issues raised.
The mother of the patient, Caroline Abiodun, had accused doctors at the hospital of medical negligence, which she claimed resulted in the paralysis of her 27-year-old daughter.
Reacting to the allegation, Ogunjimi, one of the doctors who attended to Mofeyintoluwa, described Caroline’s claims as baseless and untrue.
Ogunjimi said the patient was presented to the hospital sometime in 2021 and insisted that he did not prescribe any harmful drugs to the patient which worsened her condition as claimed by her mother.
According to him, the diagnosis was made with all due diligence and recommendations for additional tests and specialist referrals were communicated.
Speaking with Sunday PUNCH, Ogunjimi said the patient was referred to the neurology unit from the General Outpatient Department of the hospital after discovering a neurological deficiency in her.
He added that the patient would not have been referred to his unit if she had no neurological condition.
He said, “I cannot speak much on her case because of doctor-patient confidentiality. The first doctor that attended to her at GOPD already established that there was a neurological issue. If there was no neurological issue, the patient wouldn’t have been referred to my unit ab initio.
“There was a neurological deficit even before getting to me, so how would the drugs that I prescribed be the ones that introduced what the GOPD referred to me?
“When she got to me, we examined her. Part of what we saw was a neurological condition and I asked her to do an MRI scan because we noticed that there had been an ongoing problem.
“After the scan, we prescribed the drugs to her. She came back after one week, still complaining of pain and I prescribed a very low dose of topiramate which is one of the drugs we use for pain. Even though she called it drug for epilepsy, we use it to treat neuropathic pain. And all these were explained to her.
“We explained the possibility of what might be happening to her. She has a relapsing-remitting form of neurological event which we explained to her.
“She came back and told me that there was an improvement in her health but she complained that she was not comfortable with one of the drugs, gabapentin and we stopped it.
“When the Ministry of Justice called us, we explained to them that she has a chronic neurological problem that has been relapsing and remitting. We even suggested to them to look for an independent doctor to reassess and tell them what is happening.”
The spokesperson for the FMC, Abeokuta, Segun Orisajo, had told our correspondent there was no misdiagnosis.
He had said, “The CDHR is handling this matter. I am reliably informed that two meetings have been held so far with the doctors directly involved in her management being present and giving their insight into the case.
“Their involvement from the beginning has been very professional. There was neither a case of misdiagnosis nor wrong prescribing.”
When contacted for further comment, Orisajo’s phone line was not reachable.
A text message sent to him was not replied to.
The Ministry of Justice could not be reached for comment on the matter as of the time of filing this report.