Medical board: Doctor was negligent
An Irvine-based doctor has lost his medical license for over-prescribing medication to a depressed patient a month before the patient died of an overdose.
Dariush Javanshir’s license was revoked for prescribing 330 tablets of anti-anxiety medication lorazepam and 720 tablets of painkiller propoxyphene to a man in his 60s between April 1 and May 1, 2007, when the man died, according to records from the Medical Board of California.
At the time of his death, the patient was found with a lethal amount of the painkiller in his body.
From November 2006 through April 2007, Javanshir prescribed 180 tablets of Ambien, 90 tablets of Valium, 1,120 tablets of lorazepam, and 2,245 tablets of propoxyphene, according to the medical board records.
He told a medical board consultant that he prescribed the extra medication because his patient was traveling to Afghanistan, but Javanshir’s medical records reflected that the man told Javanshir he would be sending the medicine to relatives and friends in the Middle Eastern country. The medical board noted that both scenarios are an unacceptable standard of care for prescribing an opiate.
When the patient first came under Javanshir’s care in 2002, he was treated for depression with suicidal thoughts, anxiety, lower back pain, sleep disorders, panic attacks, diabetes and a cocaine addiction, among other ailments.
The medical board’s decision states that Javanshir was repeatedly negligent and did not maintain adequate or accurate medical records.
He was previously accused of overprescribing medication to a patient without performing physical exams in 1995, and was disciplined in 2002 for not performing an exam on a patient complaining of abdominal pain and headaches, and inappropriately prescribing medications to patients for ailments they didn’t have.
Attempts to reach Javanshir for comment were unsuccessful.
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