A CONSULTANT radiologist at the Midlands Regional Hospital in Mullingar has hit back at local doctors who accused staff of refusing to give patients a range of medical scans.

Five GPs in the region sparked a row when they claimed that patients referred by them were being denied treatment at the hospital and sent back with notes saying scans were not necessary.

One doctor accused the radiologists at the hospital of not wanting "to carry out X-rays on the patients that I refer to them".

He continued: "[One] patient is unable to walk and I suspect that the problem is a prolapsed disc and I have been told to treat the patient with painkillers… that is ridiculous."

CT, MRI, X-ray and ultrasound scans were among services the GPs had claimed were being denied to those on referral. They made the allegations through a local newspaper.

However, reacting to the claims, Dr Hugh Logan, a consultant radiologist, said the situation was due to a trend of increased investigative treatments which are not always helpful.

"The public has been taught by us to expect investigation and feel aggrieved if they are not available," he wrote in a letter to the same local newspaper.

"Many tests are requested and performed that we all know are useless and unhelpful, and result in waiting times for more appropriate examination being longer than they need to be.

"A number of requests are returned to the referring doctor­ for various reasons, usually because the test requested is inappropriate for the clinical problem."

Inappropriate requests "are not acceptable for scans on private patients any more than on public patients", he said.