Britain's top fertility doctor dismissed a patient's health scare as a mental block just hours before she ended up in intensive care. Mohamed Taranissi, 53, failed to run basic health checks on the vomiting woman, known as CG, who attended his famed IVF

Britain's top fertility doctor dismissed a patient's health scare as a "mental block" just hours before she ended up in intensive care.

Mohamed Taranissi, 53, failed to run basic health checks on the vomiting woman, known as CG, who attended his famed IVF clinic in Marylebone, the General Medical Council heard this week.

The millionaire specialist, dubbed the "baby god", is alleged to have put the woman's complaints of sickness and swollen wrists down to anxiety.

But later that evening she was taken to the Whittington Hospital in Highgate suffering seizures and a rare condition called hyponatraemia.

At the hearing in central London this week Joanna Glynn, acting for the GMC, said there was a "failure of general medical care" when Mr Taranissi allowed the woman to leave without examining her.

Ms Glynn explained that CG had collapsed due to a sodium deficiency because she was drinking so much water - an accepted part of fertility treatment.

Another patient, who also attended Mr Tarannisi's Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre in Wimpole Street, accused him of pressurising her to undergo a series of controversial tests.

The 36-year-old Greek woman, referred to as IK, went to the clinic on the recommendation of her doctor after she suffered two miscarriages. She claims during her appointments she was pressured to undergo £900 immunological testing, which she refused to have.

A junior doctor called her before she had her blood tests on November 18, 2003, to tell her his superiors would not let her have treatment unless she took the tests, it is claimed.

Giving evidence at the hearing on Tuesday, Patient IK told the panel Mr Taranissi showed his "true colours" when she told him she did not want the "experimental treatment" of Humira during her scan on June 23, 2004.

She added he was "sarcastic" after she arrived for the consultation and told him she had not 'downregulated' - shut the body's cycle off for pregnancy.

"I said I did not want to do experimental treatment and that's when I saw his true colours and he got all angry and told me not to complain if I miscarried," she said.

"He said. '20 years ago ICSI and IVF were experimental treatments, but look at how many people do it.' I did not reply to him as I did not know why he was angry.

"He did not explain anything and told me to stop everything, and told me to come back one day into my cycle."

Mr Taranissi insisted the patient confused him with another doctor at his clinic, the General Medical Council heard.

She saw American specialist Professor Alan Beer, who took her through the results and asked her if she would like to try Humira, it is claimed.

Prof Beer, who ran the Alan E Beer Centre for Reproductive Immunology and Genetics in Los Gatos, California, will not be able to confirm the story because he died on May 1, 2006. The hearing continues.