Florida doctor botched second circumcision after state decided to revoke his license, parents say
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Less than two weeks after the Board of Medicine decided to revoke his medical license because of a patient’s death, former OB-GYN Berto Lopez performed a circumcision on a 10-day-old infant for $250 cash, hitting an artery and mangling the boy’s genitalia, the parents said.
It was not the first time Lopez botched a circumcision, according to court documents.
In the most recent incident, the former doctor’s actions turned the unbridled joy of first-time parents into one of escalating panic as they rushed to an emergency room, then to a urologist.
The news from the urologist was devastating.
“He said he hadn’t seen a wound like this except maybe one other time in his career. He confirmed one-third of the head of the penis was cut off,” the father of the infant told The Palm Beach Post, which is a part of the Paste BN Network. “We were very shocked this could happen, that this doctor could still be working.”
Lopez carries no medical malpractice insurance. He lost all hospital privileges, and even before his medical license was revoked, he was prohibited from doing surgery without supervision of another doctor.
A circumcision, by definition, is the surgical removal of the foreskin of the penis.
The Board of Medicine revoked Lopez’s license at a meeting Feb. 5; however, an official order was not entered until Feb. 22.
License not revoked until order is entered
The couple contacted the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and were told the lag meant Lopez wasn’t technically practicing without a license. “They said it probably wouldn’t work as a criminal case,” the father said.
Department of Health spokesman Brad Dalton said a doctor's license isn't officially revoked until the order is filed. He said the delay is due to department attorneys processing the numerous decisions made by the Board of Medicine at a given disciplinary meeting.
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The Palm Beach Post discovered Lopez still holds himself to be a doctor for a company selling vitamin supplements.
A person answering the phone at the West Palm Beach office where the circumcision was performed said Lopez took some personal time and was uncertain whether he would return to practice.
Lopez left a voicemail that he had no comment for any story about him in The Post.
Woman bled to death giving birth to her 2nd child
The couple’s attorney, Gary Cohen, sued Lopez after the death of Onystei Castillo-Lopez, the case that cost the physician his license.
Lopez had punctured her cervix with an amino hook, then failed to properly repair the damage, according to court documents. Castillo-Lopez bled to death in July 2017 after giving birth to her second child.
The lawsuit was settled, though Cohen said Lopez has not kept up with his payments to Castillo-Lopez's family.
In April 2014, Lopez lost another patient, Ashley Perez, after she went into shock because of an arterial bleed following a cesarean section and tubal ligation, according to a complaint filed by the Department of Health.
The Perez case was the second time Lopez was in front of the Board of Medicine. He was disciplined in April 2004 after failing to remove a fetus who had died in utero. The woman gave birth at home to “a female fetus with normal head, neck, abdomen, legs and back.”
The Board of Medicine allowed Lopez to settle the complaints filed by the Department of Health in 2004 and 2014.
In 2004, he agreed to a board reprimand, a $10,000 fine, 15 hours of continuing medical education and 25 hours of community service.
Supervision of surgeries required
After Perez's death, the board decided in April 2017 to allow Lopez to remain in his practice with the caveat that any surgeries had to be supervised by another physician.
In July 2019, a lawsuit accused Lopez of negligence in performing a circumcision.
In this incident, according to the lawsuit, Lopez completely amputated the penis. The lawsuit was settled.
That circumcision occurred April 14, 2017 – one week after the Board of Medicine mandated another physician supervise Lopez during surgical procedures.
The lawsuit over the first circumcision is sealed. The parents of the second infant asked that their names not be published to protect their child's privacy.
“There is something seriously wrong with his practices,” Cohen said of Lopez. “These are not the normal actions of any doctor, not even a bad doctor. He never has taken even 1% of responsibility for the deaths and injuries that he has caused.”
Circumcision is a personal choice of parents and often a religious one.
Jewish mohels perform circumcision during a ceremony; often they're doctors practicing in the faith who are certified through the Board of Medicine, as well as the Jewish denomination.
There is no indication that Lopez was acting as mohel.
The latest child who suffered a botched circumcision was born on the very day the Board of Medicine decided to revoke the former OB-GYN's license.
The parents wanted to have the baby circumcised, and a midwife advised them to have it performed within two weeks.
The couple could not find a doctor who could do it until mid-March. They went back to the midwife, and she recommended Lopez.
Midwife 'should have known' about Lopez
Cohen said he did not want to identify the midwife because he was in the middle of building a possible lawsuit. The lawyer said the midwife told the clients she knew Lopez personally and warned them he “can be a little sarcastic or inappropriate with his comments.”
The father of the boy said he didn’t know whether the midwife knew Lopez had lost his license.
“We really believe that she should have known what this doctor was capable of since they had a working relationship in the past,” he said.
The couple arrived with their son Feb. 15 at Lopez’s office. They paid $250 cash before a young woman from the front desk called them back into one of the rooms.
Lopez said he would take only cash for the procedure and would not do it through health insurance, the parents said.
The father stayed with the baby in the room, while the mother waited outside. Lopez called in one of the women from the receptionist desk to assist him with the operation.
“I had the feeling that something was wrong because I knew that it was supposed to be a short procedure. And the amount of bleeding was excessive,” the father said. “I was also concerned with the fact that he had the receptionist who was at the front desk helping him with the operation instead of an actual nurse.”
The father started to doubt Lopez’s abilities when the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Lopez put in two sutures, he said.
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“He said he hit an artery,” the father said. “He said that what happened was normal and that it would heal within a couple days after we treat it, like a typical circumcision.”
It didn’t heal. The wound was so swollen the next day, the couple took their son to the emergency room. The genitalia weren't even discernable.
The next stop was the urologist and the heartbreaking assessment.
The mother said the news of permanent damage was earth-shattering.
“I had to change a diaper, you know, so many times a day,” she said. “The wound was very open.”
The worst part for her was that Lopez told them not to worry about the bleeding, that everything would heal properly.
“It’s so unfair that a doctor like that would lie to us to our face and not even tell us the truth so at least we could have gone to the emergency room and repaired the issues that he caused,” she said. “But he didn’t care. He was a liar. He shouldn’t have been operating on our son or anybody else.”
The urologist told the family the organ will never look normal.
Cohen said he is researching whether Lopez committed a criminal act after the Board of Medicine decided to revoke his license.
Lopez bills himself as doctor selling vitamins
Lopez’s lawyer said the physician planned to appeal the decision, then decided to turn in his license.
However, Lopez still billed himself as a doctor for a Palm Beach Gardens company selling prenatal and other vitamins under Folate Maxx and Coastal Vitamins, and he has a video on Amazon.com.
The vitamin company’s owner, Paul Siu, told The Post he was unaware that Lopez's license was revoked and would remove him as medical director.
Siu said he was in contact with Lopez about two times a month, when the doctor called for his payment. The former doctor was evasive when Siu asked him about his problems with the Board of Medicine.
“What I heard from Dr. Lopez was that he was getting his license back,” Siu said.
Follow John Pacenti on Twitter: @jpacenti.