Blunders by Diana’s GP slowly killed City banker over 12 years
PRINCESS Diana’s private physician was facing career ruin yesterday after he confessed to a series of medical blunders which led to the death of a top City banker.
Dr Peter Wheeler, 68, was charged with professional misconduct in his treatment of Stefanos Vavalidis’s skin conditions, after wrongly prescribing him anti-cancer medication over a 12-year period that eventually shut down his immune system.
Mr Vavalidis’s widow Barbara claimed her husband of 45 years had been ‘slowly poisoned, drip, by drip, by drip’, while lawyers accused the respected private GP of one of the ‘worst cases of repeated, persistent negligent care’.
Dr Wheeler, who also identified Diana’s body after she died in Paris in 1997, saw Mr Vavalidis, a former director of the National Bank of Greece, at his practice in Knightsbridge, where he had worked for more than 35 years. Past patients have included Prince Charles and the Duke of Kent as well as celebrity chef Nigella Lawson. But the financier suffered acute liver damage after Dr Wheeler gave him a potentially toxic anticancer medication known as methotrexate for the skin condition psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis over 12 years.
The married father- of-two was correctly treated with the drug by a dermatologist in 1999, a medical tribunal heard, to slow a condition which left him with scaly patches on his skin. But Dr Wheeler took over the treatment in 2003 and gave Mr Vavalidis 23 repeat prescriptions without studying guidelines which warn of harmful side effects. Mr Vavalidis, who lived in Chelsea, was said to have ‘suffered gravely’ before his death when his immune system began to shut down. He fell seriously ill while on a family holiday to Athens in 2015 where he was diagnosed with liver disease, cirrhosis, hepatitis, bone marrow failure and acute gastrointestinal bleeding.
Mr Vavalidis was flown back to the UK by air ambulance but died at University College Hospital in London in January 2016.
Tests showed the 69-year- old had died from cirrhosis of the liver due to methotrexate toxicity, and his family launched a £300,000 damages claim against the GP.
At the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, in Manchester, Dr Wheeler, from Belgravia, Central London, apologised after he admitted a series of failures over the death of Mr Vavalidis which could see him struck off.
He said: ‘My remorse is absolutely genuine. As a professional I have provided a high standard of care and I am devastated by what had happened in the care of the patient. I have profound regret for the mistakes I made.’
Chloe Fordham, representing the General Medical Council, said Dr Wheeler continued prescribing methotrexate for Mr Vavalidis between 2003 and 2015 ‘without the supervision of a dermatologist or another expert’.
She added: ‘Dr Wheeler did not conduct a review of that drug or the appropriate dosage when he should have done.’
The hearing continues.
‘Profound regret for my mistakes’