Husband testifies wife ‘was looking for a cure’ and found Bonita stem-cell doctor

The Grekos hearing is scheduled to resume today. The location is the Collier County Courthouse in room 4-D, according to a case filing Monday.

The hearing before J. Lawrence Johnson, an administrative law judge from Tallahassee, is scheduled to last four days. The Collier County Courthouse is located at 3315 U.S. 41 E.

Photo by Allie Garza

Zannos Grekos

EAST NAPLES The patient was friends with the mother of Dr. Zannos Grekos, a Bonita Springs cardiologist who performed stem cell therapy on people with debilitating illnesses.

Chemotherapy for breast cancer several years earlier had left the 69-year-old patient, Domenica Fitzgerald, with numbness in her legs. She was unable to walk for more than 10 minutes. She hoped Grekos and his stem cell treatment could help.

"She was looking for a cure. She wanted to get well," her husband, John "Jack" Fitzgerald, testified Tuesday.

A four-day administrative hearing started Tuesday in a Collier County courtroom for a state Department of Health complaint against Grekos. The state says he committed medical malpractice and violated other standards of care when he performed a stem cell treatment on the patient on March 24, 2010. The patient suffered brain damage.

The state is only identifying the patient in its complaint by her initials, D.F. The Daily News learned of her identity by a public records request to the Collier County Medical Examiner's Office of all people who died on April 4, 2010, in the county. That was the day that Fitzgerald died after being taken off life support.

The state last year restricted Grekos' license after her death and ordered him not to do anything with stem cells with other patients. His license was fully suspended earlier this year when the state said he violated the order by treating another patient who also died.

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Husband testifies wife 'was looking for a cure' and found Bonita stem-cell doctor