Florida surgeon ‘devastated’ over death of patient after removing liver instead of spleen | Florida
A Florida surgeon accused of allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen said he was “forever traumatized” by that person’s death.
In a recently obtained deposition from November NBCThomas Shaknovsky, 44, called the death of William Bryan, 70, “an incredibly unfortunate event for which I am deeply saddened.”
Bryan died after unsuccessful surgery; and in April, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of involuntary manslaughter.
“I will be traumatized and hurt forever by this,” Shaknovsky added, and also said that surgeries from the wrong site could be performed “under difficult conditions.”
The testimony provided Shaknovksy’s first detailed account of the operation that killed Bryan and eventually made national news headlines.
According to Shaknovksy’s testimony, after removing Bryan’s liver, the surgeon instructed a nurse to label the organ “spleen” and also identified it as a spleen in Bryan’s postoperative notes. Shaknovsky later said that he was “mentally compromised” at the time of Bryan’s death, explaining that he was “devastated, demoralized, crying over his passing, and feeling that I had failed him.”
A lawsuit filed by Bryan’s widow, Beverly Bryan, accuses Shaknovsky of medical malpractice. As NBC reports, the lawsuit alleges that “any reference to the removal of Mr. Bryan’s liver was erroneously omitted in order to ‘cover up’ Mr. Bryan’s gross negligence/recklessness and avoid embarrassment for such unattended care.”
In April, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office released a statement. expression He said Shaknovsky’s actions caused Bryan “catastrophic blood loss and the patient’s death on the operating table.”
In Shaknovsky’s statement, he described the chaos in the operating room after Bryan began bleeding profusely, causing his heart to stop. Medical personnel performed chest compressions and Shaknovsky tried to find where the bleeding was coming from.
“I couldn’t tell the difference because I was so upset,” he said, referring to the organ he mistakenly identified.
“It was like a clogged, overflowing sink, and I’m looking for a fork at the bottom, trying to feel and find the bleeding, but I couldn’t do it,” Shaknovsky said. He added: “After 20 minutes of desperately trying to save his life, that’s when the misplaced incident happened.
“This is a devastating thing that I will have to live with for the rest of my life,” Shaknovsky said in eight hours of testimony reviewed by NBC. “I think about this every day.”
When the medical team could not revive Bryan, Shaknovsky said he went to the hospital’s medical library. “I went there to cry because I was devastated,” she said. “I didn’t want the staff to see me that way.”
Although the spleen is typically much smaller than the liver, Shaknovsky said he believes Bryan’s spleen was “twice the normal size” because of the mass on it. But Beverly Bryan’s lawsuit states that a medical doctor told her that her husband’s spleen was anatomically “nearly normal,” according to NBC.
If convicted, Shaknovsky faces up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
