Operational loss

Surgery can be fatal. When 70-year-old William Bryan of Alabama, USA started experiencing lower left abdominal pain while visiting the Florida Panhandle with his wife on 21 August, he was taken to the Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital in Miramar Beach.

Doctors recommended emergency surgery to remove his spleen and Bryan underwent a laparoscopic splenectomy to avoid complications, the New York Post (NYP) reported.

General surgeon Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky operated on Bryan but removed his liver instead, which led to “immediate and catastrophic blood loss resulting in death,” according to the NYP, citing the law firm representing the late patient’s wife, who is suing the surgeon to strip him of his professional license.

Before the alleged erroneous spleen surgery, Shaknovsky had also wrongfully removed a portion of the patient’s pancreas while performing an adrenal gland resection last year.

Meanwhile, a couple won on 27 August a jury trial against ob-gyn Berto Lopez over a botched surgery that injured their baby in February 2021.

The jury, in its decision, awarded the child’s parents $100 million in damages following Lopez’s circumcision of the baby that caused bleeding, a damaged urethra and the loss of half of the patient’s penis.

As shocking as the physical harm done on the baby was the revocation of Lopez’s license by the Florida Board of Medicine 10 days before he performed the surgery on the baby, as revealed during the jury trial.

His license was revoked over a long list of botched operations throughout his 33-year practice, including the delivery of a woman’s second child in 2017 that led to her death and the amputation of another infant’s penis the same year, USA Today reported.