Faceless baby’s obstetrician banned from performing ‘any professional activity’

The obstetrician of a child from Setubal born with malformations in 2019 is prohibited from this Wednesday from “any professional activity” more than a year after being excluded from the profession, the Ordem dos Médicos (OM) has announced.

Artur Carvalho is “categorically prohibited from engaging in any medical professional activity as of March 1, 2023, by the decision of the Supreme Council of November 29, 2022, which carried out the implementation of the said sanction,” according to a public notice published this Wednesday by the OM.

“Dr. Artur Fernando Silverio de Carvalho, with professional license no. 18691, was given a disciplinary sanction of exception based on the decision issued by the Regional Disciplinary Council of the South on November 23, 2021,” as part of the disciplinary procedure, adds OM.

The motion for expulsion, the maximum disciplinary action provided for in the OM Statutes, of Artur Carvalho is dated June 5, 2020.

“In the case of baby Rodrigo [que nasceu com malformações no rosto], the Southern Regional Disciplinary Council Ordem dos Médicos has suspended the doctor for five years. The same Disciplinary Board was in the final stages of investigating five other cases, consolidated into one indictment. This decision was the maximum punishment provided for by the Charter of the Order, ”the same source said at the time.

However, at the time, the physician’s attorney stated that his client would “appeal the proposed exclusion” from the OM’s Disciplinary Board.

On May 6, 2021, the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) of Setúbal archived the investigation launched against the obstetrician, holding that the fetal malformation “was not the result of a doctor’s error, omission or negligence”, although it acknowledged that the obstetrician “violated the rules and regulations that he was tied [‘legis artis’]”.

Rodrigo was born on October 7, 2019 at the Hospital of San Bernardo, in the Centro Hospitalar de Setúbal, with several serious malformations such as the absence of eyes, nose and part of the skull, without the doctor Artur Carvalho, who performed the following: ultrasounds for pregnancy, detected or signaled about any problem to the parents.

The obstetrician who performed ultrasounds at a private Ecosado unit already had five ongoing complaints to the Medical Association, some from 2013.

Meanwhile, the obstetrician retired in June 2020 after being sanctioned by the Doctors’ Order.