A California physician faces a wide range of allegations — but not malpractice — stemming from his lithotripsy treatment of a patient with kidney stones, the Salinas Californian reports.

Aytac Apaydin, MD, a co-owner of Salinas Valley Urology Associates, which is also named in the suit, is accused of fraud, battery, statutory violations, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, negligent infliction of emotional distress, intentional infliction of emotional distress and medical negligence.

The patient, Luann Buck, says she was subjected to 6 failed lithotripsies, which her complaint characterizes as "procedures that were unnecessary and not the most reasonable means of resolving her complaints and conditions." Instead, she claims, they were performed to "[maximize] profit and billings." She says she's paid the clinic $100,000 and wants restitution for herself and "other similarly situated patients," though the suit hasn't attained class-action status.

As a result of her treatments, says Ms. Buck, she endured "severe personal injuries, great and severe nervous shock, and great physical and mental pain and suffering."

Dr. Apaydin has previously been reprimanded by the Medical Board of California — in 2008, for altering a patient's records and failing to inform the patient about the side effects of Lupron, and in 2012, for failing to discover that a piece of wire was left in a patient's bladder after a cystoscopy.

He and the Salinas clinic were also featured prominently — and unflatteringly — in a 2012 Bloomberg story suggesting that huge monetary incentives have resulted in widespread overuse of intensity-modulated radiation therapy to treat patients with cancer-related tumors.

Jim Burger