A foot doctor who was stripped of his surgery license for eight years after a patient lost a leg due to his alleged negligence now faces another claim of botched surgery from an Indianola woman who says she lost permanent function in her left foot after two surgeries.
Dr. Navin Gupta, 50, an Indianola podiatrist, mishandled two surgeries in June 2005 on Alana Jo Knudson, 34, of Indianola, a lawsuit filed in Warren County District Court alleges.
Knudson is seeking repayment of medical expenses and emotional damages against Gupta, who works at ANP Foot and Ankle Clinic in Indianola and Des Moines.
"Gupta failed to perform any of these procedures in a competent manner leading to (Knudson) having subsequent surgery and procedures and being permanently injured," Knudson's lawyers assert in the court papers.
Among the claims against Gupta is he "operated on (Knudson) in a non-surgical setting, using local anesthesia."
Gupta admits performing the surgeries on Knudson but denies responsibility for any damage to her foot, according to court records.
"This case is an example of the frivoluous litigations that is causing physicians to get out of the practice and hang it up," said Robert Goldstucker, Gupta's lawyer. "When this case is finished, Dr. Gupta will be exonerated."
Knudson claims she did not know the extent of the damage to her foot until March 2006, when she visited with a specialist in Des Moines.
"If Ms. Knudson had continued pain following Gupta's surgery, that simply is a known risk of any surgery," Goldstucker said Tuesday. "Surgery is not an exact science. The results of any surgery are not guaranteed."
The case marks the second time in the last dozen years that Gupta's surgical tactics have been publicly questioned.
The Iowa Board of Podiatry Examiners revoked Gupta's license to perform surgery in 1995 after finding him negligent in a 1991 surgery caused the amputation of a 90-year-old woman's right leg.
The board called the surgery "classic, definitional negligence in the literal sense ... in flagrant and wanton disregard of the obvious, foreseeable consequences: failure to heal, ultimately resulting in gangrene."
Gupta, who was practicing in Denison at the time, was restricted from performing surgery until Oct. 1, 2003, when he was deemed to have completed a series of board requirements, said Don McCormick, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Public Health.
The board revised its requirements for regaining his surgery rights three times between 1995 and 2003.
In 1996, Gupta was ordered to complete at least a 32-hour continuing education course on surgery before performing any podiatric surgeries and obtain certification by the American Podiatric Medical Association within two years of becoming eligible.
Gupta failed the certification exam in 1999 and again in 2000.
In 2002, Gupta was ordered to pass an evaluation of his skills by licensed podiatrists and complete 48 hours of continuing education courses.
Sixteen of those hours involved infection control and were required for completion in 2003.
Gupta failed to complete the infection control courses, telling the board he could not find courses in that subject area that related to podiatry.
Later in 2003, the board ordered Gupta to fulfill a 20-hour clerkship under an infectious disease specialist.
Both Gupta and Knudson declined to comment for this story and referred questions to their lawyers.
Knudson's lawyers, Michael Carroll and Joseph Renzo, declined to comment beyond the court filings.
The case is set to go to trial in April.
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