Michigan doctor accused of misdiagnosing children with epilepsy finally goes to trial

Tresa Baldas
Detroit Free Press
Dr. Yasser M. Awaad is a former pediatric neurologist at Oakwood Hospital and Medical Center, Dearborn, charged with misdiagnosing hundreds of Detroit-area children with epilepsy to increase his pay at the hospital.

After 11 years of waiting, more than 200 families are finally getting their day in court against a Bloomfield Hills doctor who fled the country after being accused of intentionally misdiagnosing and treating hundreds of children with epilepsy.

Neurosurgeon Yasser Awaad is back in the United States, where he is facing more than 200 individual lawsuits, including one that is wrapping up this week in Wayne County Circuit Court.

It involves a girl who was misdiagnosed with epilepsy when she was a child and pumped with drugs she didn’t need, allegedly at the hands of Awaad. The girl was actually autistic, her lawyers said, but not diagnosed for years.

This is the second case to go to trial against Awaad, who was once the top-paid doctor at Oakwood Hospital (now Beaumont) making more than $600,000 a year — more than half of it involved bonuses for bringing business to the hospital. He moved to Saudi Arabia in 2007 after shuttering his practice. He taught and practiced medicine there for years before returning to the U.S. last year for depositions in civil suits that languished for years.

Among his accusers is Kevin Patelczyk of Sterling Heights, who says Awaad diagnosed him with epilepsy when he was in high school and gave him drugs that made him so sick he attempted suicide in college by swallowing numerous pills.

Kevin Patelczyk, 30, of Sterling Heights, on Jan. 21, 2014.

“I got very depressed. Life was becoming very limited," Patelcyzk told the Free Press in 2014. ”I wanted to be done."

More: Patients await justice in epilepsy misdiagnoses suit

After being hospitalized for two weeks in a psychiatric unit, Patelcyzk was taken off his medications, got therapy and went back to see Awaad, who, he said, told him that he had a heart condition and didn't need to see him anymore.

Patelczyk eventually joined a class action lawsuit.

"Our story needs to be heard," Patelczyk said. "We were victims of a crime and we deserve some justice."

Awaad’s attorney, Harry Sherbrook, has said it’s “outrageous” to accuse the doctor of intentional bad acts.

Over the years, a judge refused to consolidate the lawsuits into a class action, but instead ordered that each case go to trial individually.

So far, two cases have gone to trial.

The first case went to trial in June, ending with a $3 million jury verdict for the plaintiff: Mariah Martinez, who was treated for epilepsy for years as a child even though she never had it.

The verdict was against both Oakwood Hospital and Awaad, who was found negligent in misdiagnosing and treating Martinez, who is now an adult.

According to trial testimony, Oakwood administration ignored reports from a parent, as well as an Oakwood pediatrician who shared offices with Awaad, that Awaad was engaging in questionable practices. Specifically, the pediatrician alerted the administration several times over the years that Awaad was using EEG’s excessively and prescribing anticonvulsant drugs to children who did not need them.

Trial testimony showed that the hospital did not investigate more than a dozen red flags that were reported about Awaad, who continued to practice until he left Oakwood in 2006.

A year later, he shuttered his practice and moved overseas.

Plaintiffs attorney Brian McKeen, whose law firm is handling hundreds of cases against Awaad, has long argued that Awaad’s alleged wrongdoing could have been prevented early on, but that no one intervened.

“Experts who testified in the case all agreed that had Awaad been investigated early on. it would have been apparent that he was systematically labeling normal EEGs as showing evidence of seizure activity,” said McKeen. “If the administration had done their duty, hundreds of children would not have been mistreated at his hands.”

Among those children is Stefan Hampel, who was diagnosed with a neurological disorder in fourth grade and was stigmatized for years. His mother told the Free Press that her son was pumped with drugs that made him fall asleep in class, was discouraged from driving and missed out on school dances because of the strobe lights.

But the doctor was wrong, the mother said. Stefan didn't have the disorder. A lawsuit followed.

Oakwood has denied wrongdoing, maintaining that children were not harmed in Awaad's care.

"We recognize how distressing it is for parents to have questions about the diagnosis and treatment of their children, and we take the claims and concerns brought forward by the former patients of Dr. Yasser Awaad and their families seriously," Oakwood said in a 2014 statement to the Free Press. But, it concluded, "we continue to believe, based on our analysis, the children were cared for and treated appropriately."

Awaad also has denied wrongdoing. He has not been criminally charged. In 2012, he was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and serve at least one year of supervised probation for misdiagnosing epilepsy in four children and giving them antiseizure drugs they didn't need.

The fine was part of a consent agreement between Awaad, the Michigan Attorney General's Office and the state Board of Medicine, which concluded in 2012: "There is no evidence in the record that any of the children referred to in the complaint suffered physical harm due to the misreading and medication."

"The order speaks for itself," Awaad's attorney in the licensing manner, Max Hoffman, has previously said. "He has been steadfast with the board and steadfast with the board's order and highly values the opportunity to practice medicine."