Medical Board Accuses 2 Doctors of Misconduct : Medicine: The death of a 72-year-old woman after surgery is cited in charges against one of the physicians. He predicts vindication after review of the case.

The Medical Board of California has brought separate charges of medical misconduct against two Orange County physicians for allegedly providing needless and potentially dangerous treatment to patients, including one elderly woman who died after surgery.

Physicians Herbert D. Tarlow of Anaheim and Paul E. Gerhardt of Buena Park face suspension or revocation of their medical licenses if a state administrative law judge finds merit to the charges.

Tarlow, a 62-year-old staff physician at Brea Community Hospital, stands accused of demonstrating incompetence and negligence in his surgical decisions in five separate cases at the hospital between 1977 and 1987.

Four of the five cases centered on elderly patients who were given gastrostomies, a surgical process by which a permanent tube is placed in the patient’s stomach to ease feeding.

One patient, a 72-year-old woman identified only as Laura W., died in September, 1986, after she was given a gastrostomy during surgery to remove her gallbladder. The medical board charged that the gastrostomy endangered her by increasing the time and difficulty of her surgery.

In the other cases, too, the board charged there were no indications that the surgery was warranted.

A medical board official said there was evidence that Tarlow may have performed needless gastrostomies in part because of his role as principal owner of the La Habra Villa retirement community.

The gastrostomies would have made it easier for retirement home attendants to feed the residents there, said the official, who requested that his name not be used. He said medical board records show that about a quarter of the patients that Tarlow admitted to the Brea hospital came from his retirement home. The complaint did not state whether the patients in the cases under review lived at La Habra Villa retirement community.

In an interview, Tarlow said his financial stake in the retirement home “had nothing to do with” his surgical decisions and promised that: “Once this thing has been reviewed by the medical board, the result will be vindication.”

State medical board officials said that Brea Community Hospital suspended Tarlow’s surgical privileges after patients made claims against him. According to a state official, a hospital review board found that the physician had demonstrated “a pattern of disregarding consultants, doing improper or unnecessary surgeries and placing severely ill patients at high risk when lower-risk procedures are available.”

A Brea hospital attorney said Wednesday that Tarlow now has family practice and assisting surgery privileges at the hospital but not primary surgery privileges. He declined to comment further.

Gerhardt, the second Orange County physician under review, faces disciplinary action by the board for the same case that resulted in his conviction last year in Orange County Municipal Court on two misdemeanor counts of prescribing a controlled substance without a legitimate medical purpose, officials said. Gerhardt pleaded no contest to the charges.

As part of his sentence, Gerhardt was ordered to surrender his medical license by March 1 but, because of delays involving a change in his attorney, that has not happened yet, according to Deputy Atty. Gen. Margaret A. Lafko. “What we’re attempting to do right now is to get that done and make sure he won’t be practicing,” Lafko added.

According to a formal accusation filed in February by the Medical Board (formerly the California Medical Board of Quality Assurance), Gerhardt, 75, gave a patient an unmarked vial of Plegine pills “to pep her up” without seeking her medical history.

Gerhardt could not be reached for comment Wednesday on the case.