The dentist Lionel Guedj has been appearing since February 28 before the Marseilles court for having performed unjustified and botched operations on hundreds of patients. The latter have followed one another since at the helm to tell their ordeal and their destroyed mouth.
- The system put in place by Dr. Guedj consisted in increasing the number of patients and placing many prostheses in order to optimize his turnover, even if it meant damaging healthy teeth.
the “system” put in place by Lionel Guedj ended up falling, and is now dissected in court. The 41-year-old dentist, who worked in the northern districts of Marseille, has been appearing in court since February 28 for “intentional violence resulting in mutilation or permanent disability” and “scam”.
He is accused of having, between 2009 and 2012, increased the number of patients, degraded healthy teeth and of having put prostheses in a hurry to optimize his turnover. He is also being prosecuted, alongside his father, for “use” and “complicity” of “false in private write”. A total of 322 patients, most of them beneficiaries of complementary universal health coverage (CMUC), filed civil suits.
Up to 180 acts billed per day
Because the abuse caused by Lionel Guedj are numerous. In addition to expensive dentures that don’t fit, the dentist’s patients regularly suffer from abscesses, pain, recurrent infections and bad breath. According to the investigators’ report, “the first consultation systematically ended in a massive program of work involving devitalizing and crowning as many teeth as possible”. And for this, the doctor did not hesitate to strongly degrade healthy teeth.
On the third day of the trial, March 2, Sophie R., who led the investigation of the medical control of the CPAM of Bouches-du-Rhône which led to the arrest of the dentist, detailed the “Guedj system” set up by the dentist as soon as his practice opens, in the 15and district of Marseille. “In fact, Dr. Guedj practiced very many devitalizations of teeth which initially were not diseased in order to place a large number of prostheses, detailed Sophie R, quoted by 20 minutes. These prostheses did not have a restrictive price, which allows practitioners to charge high fees, and which largely explains Dr. Guedj’s turnover.”
It is this multiplication of the poses of prostheses, but also of the patients, which put the chip in the ear of the Social Security, which was also constituted civil party. According to the organization, the dentist invoiced between 50 and 90 daily acts, and sometimes up to 180 acts per day. His amount of fees was 14 times higher than the average, which allowed him to record a turnover of more than 3 million euros.
“He slaughtered my mouth”
At the trial, the former patients of Dr. Guedj follow one another at the bar to tell their pain. “I had come to see him for a tooth that was hurting me. He told me that all my teeth had to be devitalized. I trusted him. He had a nice office, he was nice. I had to do remove from the hospital a piece of iron that he had forgotten during the operation”testified Yamina Abdesselem, 60, quoted by European 1.“Today I have no teeth left, and I live with two braces that hold together with a lot of glue. Why did he do that?”. “In three months, he made my whole mouth. He sharpened all my teeth and he devitalized 13 teeth. He slaughtered my mouth”said another patient, Lamia Hammami.
Thursday, March 3, Dr. Guedj painfully admitted to the bar having “lack of hindsight”. “We were caught in a gear and a high work rhythm. I was blinded by certain things, and there was a lack of lucidity on my part. (…) Let’s say that we had such a number of patients in the office that yes, there were medical errors that were made.” His trial is due to end on April 8. He faces ten years in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros.
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