Florida surgeon charged with killing man after removing liver instead of spleen | Hacker News Reader

Florida surgeon charged with killing man after removing liver instead of spleen

arstechnica.com

66 pointscanucker201630 comments

Immediately was reminded of another case of a grossly negligent surgeon, Christopher Duntsch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Duntsch

I'm sure I and many other concerned patients and potential-patients are asking; how does something like this even occur? What institutional failures in medicine led to two grossly negligent and incompetent surgeons being given the controls to peoples' lives? What safeguards were neglected at the academic and organisational layers, and what are we doing so that this does not occur again? If institutions are doing their job, no case like this should ever get to the point where a prosecutor needs to stop and clean things up, much less to the first maiming of a patient.

This is what happens when people focus on anything different than pure competence at the job (bedside manner, DEI stuff, etc).

In Florida and Texas? Maybe check to see if your priors are relevant before commenting based on them.

Oh interesting.

Texas has laws that limit medical malpractice suit judgement amounts. This is because it's a common talking point among the very ignorant in the US that healthcare is expensive because of "Bullshit lawsuits and medical malpractice insurance and that mcdonalds coffee lady".

Texas still doesn't have radically or meaningfully cheaper healthcare than places who have not implemented that scheme.

Also nice to see Greg Abbot personally intervening in the lawsuits (as AG) to ensure that justice was not served.

I just don't know even what to say to this. That is absolutely devastating for the family. This story is absolutely insane. This sounds like something you'd read about in a third-world country in the 19th century.

The fact that he just kept doubling down and then even tried to cover it up is chilling. What is his deal? He just wants to play doctor? Does he get heavily paid for surgeries?

I see this on an 4 year old review:

> I truly believe, and have been told, it sounds like the outpatient surgery benefits him more monetarily than doing it during my 8 day hospital stay.

Perhaps this guy is just in it for the money and totally out of his league.

It makes you wonder why checks and balances failed to allow this guy to practice medicine and who wasn't speaking up or being listened to. It's pretty scary if there are doctor's like this out there.

It’s unfortunately the case in 21st century in unexpected places with systemic issues and it can get worse — e.g. repeated surgeries under influence, etc.

I have to assume some kind of dementia or mental instability on the part of the surgeon. Nobody in his right mind would behave this way.

I've seen suspicion and wondered myself if the guy is even who he says he is. He might not even be an actual surgeon. Apparently, he's killed at least two other people in similar cases.

As if this guy being a surgeon isn't scary enough, what's more scary is that the system allowed him to be practicing, allowed this surgery to happen (he was an hour late and the assigned staff had went home).

I almost wouldn't be surprised if he's an imposter, under the influence, and has some mental generation or instability _all at once_. That's about the only thing that would explain this. But it still doesn't explain away the systemic issues.

This is, unfortunately, how narcissists behave. It's simply impossible for a narcissist to be wrong. They truly believe themselves to be right, all the time, and will even distort reality around them to "make" it true. And they do it all unconsciously.

This is probably more of a sociopath case than a narcissist. Narcissism does not equal lack of compassion.

To examine why, a thought experiement:

Scenes: The doctor in his office, The consultation. The surgery.

We have a carousel of sound tracks. What kind of movie soundtrack fits best?

What's the difference between cutting out someone's liver in a garage or shed or car vs. doing it in an operating room?

In 2020, a mere 2 months before all the lockdowns, I was being wheeled in for an inguinal hernia repair. I was deeply engaged in chit-chat with the nurses and surgeon, and I had been listening to "Weird Al" Yankovic a lot, because he had released a song and video called "Living with a Hernia".

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Ow1nlafOg&si=R3m4K3kDQiC...

I asked them if they were familiar with "Weird Al" and they said no, so I began singing a few bars of "Like a Surgeon" and they were mildly amused. That continued right up until they put the anaesthesia mask on my face.

The surgery was a great success!

>This sounds like something you'd read about in a third-world country in the 19th century.

Not even then. Neither third world country doctors nor 19th century physicians would confuse the liver for the spleen.

The ancient Greeks knew the difference. They may not have known what the spleen itself did, but they knew it wasn't the liver

You sure? I've seen enough terrible "surgeons" in rural America that'd rip out a liver all day long that washed out of their residency programs after "moving to Canada" and washing out of a crappy Vancouver hospital.

And there ain't no "kindly revert" when you pull the wrong organ.

Curious - does Vancouver have an especially bad reputation for medicine, or did you pick the city/country arbitrarily?

Canada's medical training program seems to me to be reasonably rigorous; as an outsider it doesn't seem worse than a typical American medical program. Unfortunately it also suffers from severe (artificial!) shortages of doctors.

How else do the third world country washout doctors end up in a rural clinic in nowhere America and end up with the Vancouver accent?

Residency on the West coast in Canada. Always.

There's a million podcasts out there about negligent butcher doctors. To be truly shocked, listen to Dr Death from Wondery to make a start: Dr. Duntsch https://wondery.com/shows/dr-death/season/1/

AND beware getting emergency surgery overseas.

I know a surgeon who warned that if for example you get appendicitis they'll take out other bits from you to claim more insurance money. I also know a person who appears to be a victim of this.

If you can possibly avoid it, go back home ot get surgery - assuming you live in a country with a trusthworthy medical system.

This occurred in Florida. This is but one isolated incident, yet, I can't help but notice the two examples that come to mind (this and Christopher Duntsch) both occurred in states with leadership that champion deregulation. Even if deregulation was the ultimate culprit, it seems inexcusable to me that academic/medical institutions aren't self-regulating effectively despite that.

My paternal grandmother had an involuntary radical hysterectomy with an emergency appendectomy either because of classist eugenics against enlisted military wives post-WWII or, as she said, the Navy surgeon was drunk. Nothing ever happened to said surgeon.

> involuntary radical hysterectomy

If this makes your grandmother feel any better this happens also nowadays, in Europe, in a country with public healthcare, with sober surgeon [1]. Some surgeons are simply psychopaths and the first time you meet them is unconscious on operating table.

https://www-rmf24-pl.translate.goog/regiony/poznan/news-obud...

In Argentina, a person had the wrong leg amputated. It is terrible to fall into the hands of surgeons in third world sanatoriums. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/sociedad/berazategui-le-amputaro...

Such as Florida.

I have hunted and killed 2 deer and butchered them along with 3 pigs... and even I can tell the difference between a liver and a spleen. People have higher opinions of doctors than they actually deserve.

> People have higher opinions of doctors than they actually deserve.

This is kind of absurd. Most doctors are both intelligent and capable. The fact that some small set of doctors is incompetent says little about doctors as a whole.

Think about people you have worked with (or still do) that are horriblely incompetent at their jobs. Now extrapolate to other professions.

No profession is immune from this and sometimes ones that appear highly regulated have some of the worst offenders.

This story is both disgusting and, unfortunately, unsurprising.

Not all those other jobs have the safeguards that the medical profession is supposed to have.

Medical malpractice consistently ranks in the top three leading causes of death in the US. Student use of AI to pass courses can only exacerbate the issue.

No it does not. This is widely spread but still misinformation.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-health/m...

https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2023/07/medical-errors-are...

I've been guilty of repeating this claim on the basis of not fully reading the original analyses. Thank you for your sources and a reminder to stay humble about what you might think you know.

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