Marwan Dib, MD

My wife, Donna, developed an atrial fibrillation, which is what brought us to Dr. Dib. To be fair, he was very thorough in making sure that she had no parallel conditions that might lead to stroke during the electrical cardioconversion procedure he planned to perform. However, when I asked him (at least a couple of times) what happens if this procedure fails, all we ever got was, “You will be fine, we don’t need to worry about what comes next, we will fix your heart for you,” with a tone like a parent annoyed with a child asking too many questions. As a result of this “I will take care of you,” fog, we were taken completely by surprise when Donna had to be admitted to the hospital, after three attempts failed to shock her heart back into a proper rhythm. The next step, it now became known to us, was to administer a drug through IV for 24 hours, to accomplish what the shocking couldn’t. Had Dr. Dib answered our questions, we would have been ready for this. Instead, we were totally unprepared and I had to make an extra trip (100 miles, round-trip). Hospital admission after this procedure is not common, but not rare, either. Dr. Dib should have explained this possibility to us before the procedure.

Dr. Dib likes to play practical jokes, at your expense, as part of his presentation. Some people like this, I hear. We didn’t. For example, at our first office visit, he spent a few minutes talking perfunctorily about the procedure, then grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and told Donna to get on the table for her “rectal exam.” Huh? After we fumbled a few confused words about this, he smiled and told us it was just a joke. We were trying to listen carefully to what he was saying, trying not to miss anything, when he tossed in this ridiculous “humor,” knocking us completely off-balance, just to satisfy his sense of showmanship. This left us squirming in our chairs, wondering how we should respond to anything he was saying. Joke? Medical information? Hard to tell. Clearly, though, the jokes were more important than offering substantial answers to serious questions, several of which were still hanging when he walked out of the room. Time, and time again, he would respond to technical questions with deflecting, condescending “reassurances,” failing to offer any information.

The final insult came at discharge. The intravenous procedure ended at noon, the next day, and we were told that Dr. Dib would be in thereafter to finalize the discharge. Even though we were told, repeatedly, that he was “on the floor” and would be in to see us “shortly,” it was 3 ½ hours later that he finally walked in the room, said in the most off-hand way, “Oh, I see that you are fine; you can go,” and started walking out. At this point, I lost my temper, a bit, and asked him if there were some medical reason that required us to wait over three hours, at the end of a completely unexpected hospital stay, for this 5-second proclamation, and why weren’t we told about the possibility of hospitalization before hand? He did not take this criticism well. After a few more words, he told me that “You (meaning me) needed to find a new cardiologist,” and stormed out of the room, dismissing my wife as his patient, even though she hadn't said a word to him. Subsequent attempts to bring this logical fallacy to his attention elicited no response. His sense of pride turned out to be much more important to him than fidelity to the Hippocratic Oath.

In my opinion, Dr. Dib does not make a good doctor. He listens only to himself, and consistently puts his own self-image ahead of the patients' needs. He prefers to dismiss questions with barely disguised condescension and misdirection. Look elsewhere for a cardiologist, unless you enjoy being treated like a child.