Manchester ENT Specialist

"Stay clear! We took our 4 year old son there when he started to show signs of a hearing problem in one of his ears. We were asked to do a hearing test and the BMI Alexandra hospital charged us for a hearing and speech test which he never did. The ENT who saw him suggested that our son had been born with a sensorineural deafness (permanent deafness) in that ear but nevertheless still transfered us to her colleague Dr Karagama. He then recommended my son to have a grommet inserted in his ear. We didn't understand why he wanted to do that but he was the specialist so we went with it. Our son was put under general anaesthesia and had the grommet inserted in his ear. A few minutes after the operation Dr Karagama spoke to us and said that the grommet wouldn't help because he hadn't found any fluid inside my son's ear suggesting that it was a permanent hearing loss. He then referred my son to another ENT specialist at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital. This other ENT was shocked that my son had had grommet inserted in his ear when his hearing tests results made it so clear that our son's deafness was permanent and a grommet would never be able to do anything to improve his condition. We then went back to Dr Karagama to ask him to remove the grommet from our son's ear. First he wanted to put our son under general anaesthesia to do that procedure but we refused it. He then tried to convince us to leave the grommet in the ear and let it fall by itself but we insisted we wanted it removed as it was causing ear infections. He finally agreed to remove the grommet using only a local anaesthetic but he charged our insurance company for two appointments. So in summary Dr Karagama: 1) Knowingly put our son under general anaesthesia and carried out a grommet insertion procedure that was never going help with my son's condition; 2) Wanted to put our son under general anaesthesia again to remove the grommet. 3) Charged our insurance company for two appointment fees when we asked him to remove the grommet using only a local anaesthetic. 4) And as the icing on top of the cake, a couple weeks ago (8 months after we last saw him) we received a warning letter from his secretary threatening us with debt collectors over 2 unpaid bills. All our bills had been settled by our insurance company and when we sent Dr Karagama evidence of that we never heard back from him. Not a single apology for their mistake. I would NOT recommend Dr Karagama to anyone."

"What's the situation with answering the phones? Tried twice ringing, in position one both times for half hour and requested call back and heard nothing. For a private clinic not very good service so far."

"Mr Karagama was very professional and quick indeed at dealing with my daughters throat issues, for years she suffered endless trouble with enlarged tonsils and being very young too she was very shy and worried being around doctors. However Mr Karagama showed true professionalism and was able to make my daughter feel comfortable and safe in his care. I would highly recommend Mr Karagama to any parent who's child needs any Ear, Nose and Throat care or even the Parent's too!"