ATHENS: A senior Greek heart surgeon is under investigation for allegedly using a certificate bearing the forged signature of renowned Egyptian-British surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub to land a job at one of the country s top hospitals, Greek media said Thursday.
The health ministry on Wednesday said it had alerted Greek judicial officials after Yacoub denied signing the specialization certificate held by the surgeon, who has been suspended pending the end of the investigation.
The surgeon is believed to have used the certificate in his original application to join Athens Ippokrateio hospital in 1981, and subsequently rose to head the hospital s heart surgery department in 2003, news reports said.
An internal probe by health ministry officials also found that the surgeon had a consistently high patient mortality rate at the clinic in 1999-2005, with between 17 and 24 percent of patients dying after surgery.
This is a very serious report, but patient cases differ and we need to examine each death separately, said Christodoulos Stefanadis, a professor of cardiology and head of the Athens University medical school.
I don t know which committee examined [the surgeon s] certificates, but doctors are not graphologists and have no ability to verify signatures, he told Skai Radio.
The health ministry did not return calls on the issue on Thursday.
Appearing on state television, Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos said his services had completed their own investigation into the case and a prosecutor was now in charge.
The justice department has now taken over, said Avramopoulos. All such cases will be stamped out.
Magdi Yacoub is widely known here for overseeing in 1988 a successful triple bypass surgery on Greece s then prime minister, Andreas Papandreou, at London s Harefield hospital.
