Confident... but not to be trusted

Fayez Mahfouz is the kind of confident and dashing doctor that made patients trust him instantly.

He had a flashy website and impressive-looking certificates on the walls of plush consulting rooms in Harley Street.

But he had already been struck off the medical register in 1987 after he failed to refer a dangerously ill diabetic patient to hospital when he was a GP.

In 1992 Mahfouz applied to the GMC and was allowed back on the register.

But last year Mahfouz, who lives in a smart development in Hampstead, was back in front of the GMC over the treatment of five patients in

2000.

The council heard he had exaggerated the efficacy of treatments and begun some before anaesthetics had taken effect.

Striking him off again, the GMC panel said he held patients in contempt.