Evidence put before the Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Committee (FTPC) investigation of Dr Michael Neary suggests that the frequency of Caesarean hysterectomy carried out by at least one other doctor at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda may have been excessive.
The suggestion is contained in the committee's report into the professional conduct of Dr Neary, and his management of ten women who had their wombs removed while undergoing Caesarean section at the hospital.
Data comparing the incidence of the normally rare procedure shows that the obstetrics unit in Drogheda carried out 20 times the number of Caesarean hysterectomies in the 1990s compared with the Coombe Women's Hospital and the National Maternity Hospital.
In its report, a summary of which was circulated to the ten women yesterday, the council called the findings a substantial deviation from the norm and "a source of very serious concern".
The committee also said in its summary that Dr Neary "grossly exaggerated" the true nature of his patients' conditions in his delivery notes.
It noted the young age of many of the women involved, four of whom were having their first baby.
It said there were no efforts taken to preserve their fertility and that Dr Neary often over-reacted to what he perceived to be copious bleeding.
The revelations will put considerable pressure on the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to initiate a wide-ranging inquiry into the practise of obstetrics at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
In its summary of the ten cases it considered, the committee said of Dr Neary's practise: "There was a pattern of rapid recourse to Caesarean hysterectomy, discrepancy between clinical notes and pathological findings . . . and a tendency to exaggerate events."
Transcripts of the evidence of Dr Neary to the committee hearing, seen yesterday by The Irish Times, show that he strongly defended his decisions to carry out Caesarean hysterectomies on the ten women.