In Second Day of Testimony, Doctor Calls Neurosurgeon Duntsch's Outcomes Catastrophic
Last edited Sun Feb 5, 2017, 09:25 AM - Edit history (1)
The headline-grabber on Friday was the phrase “I can fix you.” In the second day of testimony in the state’s aggravated assault case against the neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, prosecutors brought forth another pair of patients who told similar stories: referrals from a pain management doctor, an impressive initial visit with the charismatic Duntsch, a suggestion of surgery, and lifelong post-surgical pain.
The parrying between the state and the defense focused on whether his disastrous outcomes will rise to the degree of criminal. Prosecutors used testimony from two patients and the three doctors who corrected Duntsch’s errors, arguing to the jury that what happened in those operating rooms was never merely medical error, that this was a man who knew that he was likely to harm people as long as he was practicing and that he did next to nothing once his patients awoke to searing pain. Patient Barry Morguloff testified that Duntsch’s staff used his history of addiction to minimize the pain he suffered after awakening from a fusion operation in his lower spine, which one doctor characterized as “the easiest operation a spine surgeon can do.” Morguloff said he felt like he’d been hit by a truck, and it took days for Duntsch to order follow-up imaging to try to identify its source despite showing symptoms that pointed to possible neurologic damage. Morguloff testified that his wife was told by a nurse that Duntsch suspected him of lying about the pain to get more narcotics. He said he’s been sober for more than 10 years.
Duntsch has been jailed since July 2015 on five counts of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury and one count of causing injury to an elderly person. The state will need to prove that he was operating with a reckless disregard for the accepted standard of care. The defense again questioned the patients about the consent forms they signed before undergoing surgery and attempted to establish as fact from the expert physicians that mistakes do happen during operations. But two of the three doctors called to the stand on Friday, the vascular surgeon Randall Kirby and the neurosurgeon J. Michael Desaloms, spoke of Morguloff’s result as a unique medical failure.
“He performed worse than any spine surgeon I’ve seen in the operating room,” said Kirby, who cut into Morguloff’s abdomen and helped move his organs and blood vessels away from the spine so that Duntsch could operate, a procedure that he said just four surgeons in North Texas perform. Desaloms, who performed Morguloff’s corrective surgery about nine months after Duntsch’s operation, called the result a “striking abnormality,” adding that it was “definitely an outlier” in his nearly two decades of practicing post-residency. Kirby called the results “catastrophic.”
Read more: http://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2017/02/in-second-day-of-testimony-doctor-calls-neurosurgeon-duntschs-outcomes-catastrophic/
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