A DOCTOR at an exclusive cosmetic surgery faces being struck off the medical register after being found guilty of disfiguring two women during laser treatments on their skin.

Fayez Abu Mahfouz, a surgeon based at the London Laser Cosmetic Centre in Harley Street, gave inadequate treatment to two patients, one of whom claimed to have been severely burnt during the surgery to remove swelling and lines on her face.

A panel of the General Medical Council found Dr Mahfouz, 57, guilty of more than a dozen charges, including operating without due care and skill, failing to properly administer a local anaesthetic and making inappropriate claims about his treatments.

The panel of the GMC must now decide whether Dr Mahfouz’s failings amount to serious professional misconduct. If so, the doctor could face being struck off for a second time, after first losing his licence to practice while working at a GP’s surgery in the 1980s.

The Egyptian doctor, who denies serious professional misconduct, was found to have bungled a series of procedures between January 2000 and October the following year. It also emerged yesterday that the GMC is investigating six further complaints by former patients about treatment they received. The two women, who both paid thousands of pounds for their procedures, were left with permanent scarring after the routine laser treatment on their faces.

Dr Mahfouz told the hearing that he advised all his patients honestly and thoroughly and they were free to “run for their life” if they were unhappy at any stage.

The surgeon had claimed one of the allegations was motivated by a patient’s desire to win compensation and that the poor results after her treatment were due to her not heeding his aftercare advice.

The woman, referred to as Mrs B, from Kingston upon Thames, told the panel that the operation had left her face “a huge, weeping, swollen crust” and caused her to lose eyelashes and part of her eyebrows.

While the doctor was cleared of giving inappropriate advice about the success of his procedures to Mrs B, he was found to have made inaccurate claims to her daughter, who also underwent treatment by the surgeon for pigmentation marks on her legs caused by mosquito bites. A charge of providing inadequate treatment or inappropriate post-operative care to Miss A was found not proven, however.

Dr Mahfouz was also found guilty of bungling a £5,000 operation on a patient known as Mrs C. The GMC was told the woman, from Yorkshire, still needs camouflage make-up to hide white areas on her face left by surgery. The panel’s decision will be given later.

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