Ex-Texas neurosurgeon sentenced to life for maiming patients

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Ex-Texas neurosurgeon sentenced to life for maiming patients

Feb. 20, 2017 5:18 PM EST

DALLAS (AP) — A jury has sentenced a former neurosurgeon to life in prison for maiming patients who had turned to him for surgery to resolve debilitating injuries.

The decision came Monday, almost a week after the Dallas County jury convicted 44-year-old Christopher Duntsch of first-degree felony injury to an elderly person.

Prosecutors alleged numerous cases of malpractice against the former Plano physician, including that he improperly placed screws and plates along patients' spines, left a sponge in another patient and cut a major vein in another.

Records show he operated on the wrong part of a patient's spine and left one woman wheelchair-dependent. Two patients died.

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Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ae76af9bb6ce43f8a4ff7823922556d0/texas-neurosurgeon-sentenced-life-maiming-patients

[JoeOtterbein]

1. And the GOP wants to CUT regulations!

[Princess Turandot]

2. Good lord. I just read another article about this that was written while he was under...

investigation but not yet arrested. It's a bit jaw-dropping. (It includes his explanations as to why he personally did nothing wrong.)

It was two other neurosurgeons, one of whom had been brought in to attempt to repair the harm Duntsch had done to a patient, who separately reported him to the state board.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2014/03/01/planos-baylor-hospital-faces-hard-questions-after-claims-against-former-neurosurgeon

Dr. Robert Henderson, a veteran Dallas spine surgeon, was called in by Dallas Medical administrators for rescue surgery [on a former Duntsch patient].
Henderson couldn’t believe what he saw — amputated nerve roots, muscle damage, badly misplaced “bone putty” and “three screw holes that weren’t anywhere near where they were supposed to be,” he said.
...
The procedure had been so badly bungled, Henderson said, that he believed the surgeon who performed it couldn’t have been an actual doctor.

Henderson secured a photo of the surgeon and sent it to the residency program in Tennessee, to make certain it was the real Duntsch working in Dallas.

“I was sure it was going to come back that he was one of those guys wearing a white coat who was a wannabe,” Henderson said. “I thought he was an impostor.” But the Tennessee officials assured him that was not so.