OB/GYN Caught Performing Hundreds of Unnecessary Hysterectomies Without Consent
As a woman, your OB/GYN is supposed to be your most trusted medical adviser -- the person you can go to with all your intimate healthcare questions, who monitors your pregnancies, and delivers your babies. But women in Chesapeake, Virginia, who entrusted Dr. Javaid Perwaiz, 69, with their most personal health needs, now feel violated in some of the worst ways imaginable. According to a disturbing new report by Buzzfeed, Perwaiz performed hundreds of unnecessary surgeries on his patients without their knowledge or consent -- including hysterectomies and having their tubes tied.
Perwaiz was arrested Friday and charged with health care fraud, as well as making false statements relating to health care matters.
The Chesapeake doctor allegedly performed more than 500 surgeries between January 2014 and August 2018 -- of which 42 percent of patients received two or more surgeries, according to court documents obtained by Buzzfeed.
In many of these cases, Perwaiz is said to have intimidated patients into surgery after leading them to believe that the "onset of cancer was imminent."
Most disturbing of all is that many of these patients were unaware of what Perwaiz had even done to them when they were under the knife.
Buzzfeed cites one case in particular, in which a woman went to Perwaiz for dilation and curettage surgery, believing she had endometriosis. On a second visit, she returned to receive treatment for an ectopic pregnancy.
But when that same woman later sought the expertise of a fertility specialist, she was floored when they informed her that both of her fallopian tubes were "burnt down to nubs" -- something that made conceiving through natural means impossible. According to the documents, Perwaiz had allegedly removed the woman's fallopian tubes entirely -- without her having any idea.
In another case, Perwaiz falsely claimed a woman was at high risk for cancer, and he recommended a full hysterectomy.
The woman initially refused, on the grounds of not wanting to have invasive surgery, but did ultimately agree to removing her ovaries -- a procedure that never needed to happen.
But it gets worse.
After the surgery, the woman learned Perwaiz had performed a total abdominal hysterectomy and punctured her bladder during the operation. As a result, she contracted sepsis and remained hospitalized for six days.
Her concern grew further after digging deeper into her medical file and reading that her operation had been marked as an "elective surgery," with no mention of her cancer risk.
Although Perwaiz has only been charged for alleged malpractice between 2014 and 2018, it's clear the signs were there decades ago.
In 1996, his medical license was temporarily suspended for two years after Perwaiz pleaded guilty to tax evasion. He was also sued for malpractice eight times, court records show.
But this is perhaps the most eye-opening part of the report: The Virginia Board of Medicine launched an investigation into the doctor during the early '80s for the very same crime he's accused of now -- "performing surgeries, predominantly hysterectomies, without appropriate medical indications and contrary to sound medical judgment."
If you're wondering how on earth this man somehow skated by without prosecution and was somehow allowed to keep practicing, that's a question that will undoubtedly come back to haunt the medical board too. Buzzfeed reports that the case against Perwaiz was "ultimately censured for poor record keeping."
This time around, though, the paper trail is long and detailed.
The FBI was first alerted in September 2018 when a hospital staffer called in a tip that the doctor might be performing unwanted surgeries, according to the New York Times. Staff was particularly concerned when patients said they were there for their “annual clean outs” and began to notice the doctor was hard to keep tabs on, because he was always running from procedure to procedure.
As of Monday, Perwaiz was booked as an inmate at Western Tidewater Regional Jail in Virginia, where he'll await his next court date.