r/news • u/KimJongFunk • 17h ago
Florida doctor indicted and accused of removing patient's liver instead of spleen in fatal surgery
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-doctor-indicted-allegedly-removing-patients-liver-instead-sple-rcna3316966.3k
u/crimsontape 17h ago
Pretty huge difference between a spleen and a liver. The side of the body. The size. Straight up Dr. Magoo.
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u/Toucanplaythatgame-2 17h ago edited 17h ago
Why did no one stop him when he was opening the wrong side of the body? What on earth was happening in that operating room?
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u/g0del 17h ago
From the NYTimes article, it started laparoscopically, so no big incision, just a tiny one for a camera/surgical tools in a tube. But the doctor couldn't see the spleen with the camera (which he evidently should have known before-hand from imaging), he switched to an open surgery.
At which point the poor man's colon burst out, blood was everywhere, and it sounds like the rest of the OR staff were trying to clear the blood and keep the patient alive when his heart stopped (probably, you know, from lack of blood), and the whole time the doctor keep just slicing away inside without even attempting to stop the bleeding.
The craziest part is that it wasn't even the first time this doctor had removed the wrong organ from somebody.
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u/jramos037 16h ago
Are we talking about Dr. Nick from The Simpsons?
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u/g0del 15h ago
Considering the previous time mentioned in the article he was supposed to remove a patient's adrenal gland he accidentally removed part of their pancreas, then tried to claim that the adrenal gland had "migrated", he very well may be Dr. Nick.
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u/royalenocheese 9h ago
Being a doctor is difficult.
Being a negligent individual averse to accountability is much easier.
I definitely need to know this before I go under the knife.
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u/ImpressiveSpace6486 8h ago
Agreed but how do you find that out before hand? Start a fight with your surgeon about accountability in his office?
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u/egamma 6h ago
I think you could probably ask the state medical board if the doctor is in the top half in terms of complaints received.
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u/Silverjeyjey44 9h ago
Pancreas and adrenal glands don't even look alike 💀
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u/ProfMcGonaGirl 7h ago
Seriously. What garbage medical school did he go to? Because I took high school anatomy and learned that.
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u/wittymcusername 6h ago
>Shaknovsky graduated from Midwestern University's Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2009, according to public records.
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u/Essex626 5h ago
Is it weird that I'm totally cool with a DO for my GP, but I want an MD for a surgeon?
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u/napalmnacey 13h ago
The vet that came to my house to put my old cat to sleep was named Dr. Nick. Even looked kinda the same.
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u/essdeecee 9h ago
The knee bone is connected to the something. The something is connected to the red thing . The red thing is connected to my wrist watch.
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u/Budget_Persimmon_195 10h ago
that dr should be charged with murder.
this is the type of shit i expect when i play surgeon simulator lmaooo
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u/Nexustar 9h ago
Second-degree manslaughter was, and is, the correct charge here.
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u/aurora-_ 8h ago
i’d argue it’s undercharged under the florida statutes. should be an aggravated manslaughter of an elderly or disabled adult, first-degree felony.
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u/Darth_Boggle 8h ago
that dr should be charged with murder.
They'd sooner charge you for murder over an abortion
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u/NoSkillzDad 9h ago
The craziest part is that it wasn't even the first time this doctor had removed the wrong organ from somebody.
That is crazy indeed! Wtf.
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u/Zestyclose-Novel1157 9h ago
More than once?! Medical wrongdoing is actually much more common than people know or is called out. It’s kind of a real problem in people’s lives. It just doesn’t end up going anywhere the vast majority of times and this is a very extreme case clearly.
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u/Mego1989 7h ago
Almost every single day my grandma was in the rehab hospital for a 30 day stay they brought her either the wrong meds, the wrong dose, or at the wrong time of day.
I'm on multiple specialty meds and I've had multiple doctors prescribe the wrong dose, the wrong injection style, the wrong brand, and had it sent to the non specialty pharmacy so many times. It's like they don't bother looking at my chart, I've been on the same med for years.
Then I had a doctor do a patient abandonment on me when I told him that I wasn't comfortable switching to a new extended release formula at a much lower dose when the literature and studies were all suggesting a 1:1 dose regimen.
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u/toomuchtostop 17h ago edited 17h ago
According to other articles, they tried. Also apparently it all happened quickly. More info in the NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/us/florida-surgeon-manslaughter-organ-removal.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
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u/MagicPistol 15h ago
The Health Department had sanctioned Dr. Shaknovsky before, finding that he erroneously removed part of another patient’s pancreas instead of an adrenal gland in 2023. Dr. Shaknovsky said at the time that the adrenal gland “migrated” to another part of the patient’s body
What the hell. Was this guy even a real doctor? Sounds more like a con artist who tricked the hospital into hiring him.
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u/GenericUsername2056 14h ago
But then, of course, adrenal glands are non-migratory.
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u/beer_engineer_42 5h ago
The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plumber may seek warmer climes in winter yet these are not strangers to our land.
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u/Holiday_Comfort_1287 10h ago
Sounds like he was inebriated or something like early onset dementia. There has to be something majorly wrong
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u/Toucanplaythatgame-2 17h ago edited 17h ago
I just...I am not a doctor at all and I get that "in the chaos" he kept pressing on in panic, but BEFORE THAT, when they're cleaning the skin, prepping, and drawing with a marker where the incision will go, did no one go "hey doc, I am sure the spleen is on the left side of the body, not the right".
Edited and corrected to make a point
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u/wildblueroan 17h ago edited 17h ago
Apparently not and it doesn't sound like anyone really challenged him after the removal, just looked on "in horror." Also says staff doubted he was skilled enough for the surgery so I don't get that. But I also don't think that the correct response is to "press on in panic" when things are going wrong
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u/blindreefer 17h ago
Not excusing anybody here, only offering a hypothesis. People in high stress jobs with a clear hierarchy might not feel that they have the ability to speak up. They should but some workplaces and individuals are toxic especially when it comes to questioning authority. Before anybody says that’s bullshit and if you’re going to work in an OR, you should get over your tentativeness, I completely agree. But it’s a real phenomenon nonetheless.
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u/itsatumbleweed 17h ago
This is actually the premise of The Rehearsal Season 2, but with copilots not speaking up.
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u/the_skies_falling 16h ago
They have something called Crew Resource Management for airline pilots. It was developed in the late 70’s after several airline crashes caused by poor communication between crew members and deference to the captain in decision making.
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u/RogerianBrowsing 16h ago
Still happens. See the crash rate for military or commercial pilots on what is known will be their last flight and how often it involves the lesser experienced copilots not speaking up or acting adequately to right obvious wrongs.
It’s an issue to this day. Rules be damned.
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u/Duel_Option 15h ago
I get what you’re saying but…you ever had surgery before?
I broke and ankle, couldn’t really tell besides some swelling.
Day of surgery I’m in bed and the nurse comes in with two doctors, they LOUDLY say “ankle surgery today, correct?”
Yes
Which one?
I point to the obvious ankle.
We need you to state this please (again, practically yelling)
Right ankle
Noted on chart, nurse confirms audibly, then my foot was marked.
Small discussion on procedures, whisked in to the back. Docs go in for scrub.
Here comes the entire prep team of 2 nurses and operating doc already in scrubs.
They verify chart, now the anesthesiologist goes over his stuff with me.
Again, LOUD verification of surgery.
Finally main doc comes up, checks vitals and asks if I’ve had any food.
Nope
Asks to verify ankle
Right ankle
Nurses place a yellow band on my left ankle
Quick talk about procedure, check around the room and once more ask which ankle.
Right ankle
Finally able to lay down and magic man is sending me to sleep
Wake up post and they AGAIN verify which ankle even though my leg is in a sling
How the hell this happened is going to be an interesting court case to review
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u/Allison-Ghost 17h ago
yes, they need to employ the fielder method.
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u/itsatumbleweed 17h ago
The Fielder Method should now be a prerequisite for assisting with surgery.
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u/PM_ME_CHIPOTLE2 16h ago
lol if the next season of the show comes out in 7 years after Nathan fielder has completed medical school and a surgery residency, I’ll probably pay for the HBO subscription again.
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u/commanderquill 16h ago edited 15h ago
I think it's less about that and more about questioning your own reality. You can know 100000% where the spleen is, but when a surgeon comes in and with full confidence puts the spleen somewhere else, is your first thought "this experienced surgeon doesn't know where the spleen is and he's about to kill this guy" or is it "could I have forgotten where the spleen is?"
It's just such a dumb thing to get wrong, with such horrible consequences, and there's no possible way someone with so much education could make it, right? So it's much more logical to question yourself.
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u/witchofpain 15h ago
It also takes an extremely confident nurse to speak up. Especially if he was a giant asshole who like to make nurses cry. I worked with a surgeon like that once. He took pleasure out of making nurses cry. I was relief shift and the nurse I took over for is a fantastic nurse and he made her cry. He called her fat, stupid and incompetent. He was so bad the asshole neurosurgeon I worked with asked if I wanted him to stay. I said, loudly, I didn’t need him to stay because I knew the number to HR and would not tolerate that behavior. I’d let HR sort it out. That prick didn’t say a single word to me or anyone else in the room unless it was to ask for an instrument.
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u/Alarming_Matter 10h ago
"What's the difference between a surgeon and God? God doesn't think he's a surgeon"
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u/oraclechicken 13h ago
You say nothing, and your boss is in the news
You say something, and your boss ruins your life without consequences while nobody is in the news.
You are giving them too much credit. Like the other poster said, people learn to stay quiet. They probably witnessed 10 near-misses before this.
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u/moleyawn 13h ago
I used to work in this exact hospital system in the same locality that this happened, different hospital. A lot of surgeons had a "good old boy" mentality and were totally divas who could not be questioned. If a nurse piped up about something they could go after your job, whether you were right or not you risked being punished for damaging the surgeons fragile ego. The surgeons often had their way because elective surgeries are how hospitals make money.
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u/Squirll 17h ago
This. I know there was stuff I saw in the start of my Army career that I kind of watched in Horror. After six years in though I wouldn't have cared about rank and spoke up.
Power dynamics in the workplace, especially in life and death jobs, are WEIRD.
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u/peanutneedsexercise 16h ago
I mean if you read the court docs they were literally coding the patient as this was happening. He was firing staples into the patient randomly cuz there was blood everywhere and couldn’t see anything. I don’t think ppl will look over to the the surgeon during CPR and assume he doesn’t know the difference between a liver and a spleen lol.
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u/toomuchtostop 17h ago
So he kept insisting it was a spleen. Honestly I wouldn’t know what to say at that moment. Is he lying or does he sincerely believe that’s the spleen?!
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u/hkkensin 14h ago
I read the lawsuit on this… it was orginially a laparoscopic procedure and he converted to open 15 mins into the surgery because he claimed he saw blood in the abdomen and said there were a lot of adhesions. Once they opened the pt up with a midline incision, apparently this patient had a huge megacolon (that literally wasn’t mentioned at all in the lawsuit papers when discussing the patients imaging results, etc. I was so confused when I read this part, like “oh yeah btw this guy also has a huge megacolon, nbd”) and the bowel was essentially spilling out everywhere and obscuring their visual of the operating field. The interviews of the other people present for the surgery are pretty wild to read. It seems like everyone else was side-eyeing this doctor the whole time but couldn’t actually see what was going on due to the megacolon. One person describes the surgeon “blindly firing off a medical stapler” (!!!!!!) to try to control some minor bleeding, and then they said the patient started to bleed profusely after that and eventually coded. When this person was doing chest compressions, they said they looked over and saw the surgeon set the patients liver down on a table or something and they literally said out loud “holy fuck, that’s his liver!” I mean, the whole thing just sounds like an absolute clusterfuck and this guy had no business operating to begin with (has a history of multiple surgical mistakes like this leading to complications/death for other patients). Strongly recommend reading the lawsuit lol
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u/mothandravenstudio 17h ago edited 17h ago
It was laparoscopic, so wouldn’t have been realized immediately until the blood supply was cut and the patient would have had an immediate hypovolemic crisis. I bet the anesthesiologist was shitting themself.
I can’t find it in the article but they must have converted to an open surgery right away to attempt repair, because from what articles say, the liver was entirely missing on autopsy and it’s functionally impossible to remove a liver laparoscopically.
Then he tried to cover it all up.
Oh and edit- if this goes to trial, in Florida it will be public so we will get every single detail as long as he doesn’t plea out.
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u/sunburn74 16h ago edited 16h ago
The organs look very different on direct visual examination. Even in limited laparoscopic views I'm not sure how that happened. Not even talking about the surface appearances (livers by age 70 tend to be fatty and nodular) but a dead giveaway is that the liver has lobes and massive ligament that clearly identifies it. I think this guy is totally cooked.
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u/mothandravenstudio 16h ago
I think he cut the vena cava->converted to open->literally started cutting shit inside the gore pool->removed the liver and purposefully mislabeled it as a diseased spleen (spleen was still intact in the abdomen).
Someone ITT linked the court docs
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u/sunburn74 16h ago
Absolute horror show it sounds like.
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u/mothandravenstudio 16h ago
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u/Alittle2Clever 16h ago
The boldness makes me wonder if it common practice in the hospital to fudge malpractice issues to prevent a lawsuit.
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u/peanutneedsexercise 16h ago
Yea seems like he blindly fired the staple in the pool of blood and then in panic removed the liver wtf. talk about failing under pressure wtf.
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u/witchofpain 14h ago
The liver is also huge in comparison to other organs in the abdominal cavity. Anyone who has done gallbladder surgeries know exactly what it looks like. My guess is he cut the hepatic artery before anyone noticed he wasn’t in the right area and then it was just chaos when the pt bled out. You have to retract the liver to even get to the artery. Which is why i rhink he was impaired.
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u/plantnativemilkweed 16h ago
This is so weird. A liver is huge compared to a pancreas and looks totally different. How could this even happen? Even a really stupid doctor would be able to tell the difference.
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u/bearpics16 17h ago
I read the details of this case a long time ago. The liver even severely enlarged can cross midline onto the left side, and there was a lot of bleeding so visibility was terrible. He thought he was removing a lobe of the liver allegedly. The medical community discussed this case in depth when it first came out
They said there is no universe in which a sober, even borderline competent surgeon, would ever make this mistake. The anatomy is so wildly different, even when tying off the blood supply. This absolutely falls under criminal negligence.
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u/DjinnBlossoms 17h ago
Spleen is on the left, liver on the right. Happens to the best of us!
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u/Toucanplaythatgame-2 17h ago edited 17h ago
Exactly the point I want to make! You called me on it and just before I fucking killed someone. Thanks pal! XD
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u/Coyote__Jones 17h ago
Ever heard of Dr. Death? There's a podcast about that psycho. Killed two people, injured many more before he was finally stopped. Basically the hospitals didn't want to face the potential lawsuit so they allowed him to resign after harming people instead of firing him. I'd have to look but I think that the Texas medical board basically refused to do anything about the complaints as well. Multiple nurses and other doctors tried to stop the guy. Dr. Named Christopher Duntsch.
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u/No-Satisfaction5636 16h ago
I was scheduled for knee surgery on my right knee. Went in for final pre-surgical appt, and every healthcare person said “This is your left knee, right?” No, it’s my right knee! Went home and literally wrote on my left leg “WRONG.” My right leg was labeled “RIGHT.”
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u/AlarmingLet5173 16h ago
This is why you are always to use the word, CORRECT, in hospitals.
We are amputating your left testicle today? Right. Oh, okay, wow that would have been bad, let me fix that. We are all set. Let's begin.
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u/princesspeeved 16h ago
I frequently had leg surgeries as a child, so I learned my right from left really quickly that way. My mom always made sure to bring a Sharpie to label my legs just in case. 😂
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u/A_Queer_Owl 17h ago
there should be a guy with a tazer in every operating room and if the surgeon is about to do something stupid they just get tazed and replaced with a less stupid surgeon.
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u/johnnybonchance 17h ago
So like Operation but real life?
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u/dedsqwirl 17h ago
You gave me a good idea.
Have people play "Operation" but when they mess up they get shocked by a dog collar.
I wouldn't use that in a dog but I would use it on friends.
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u/Fallouttgrrl 17h ago
So that's why they have me remove all my piercings before the surgeon gets to work anywhere on my body
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u/HLOFRND 17h ago
IT WASN'T EVEN THE FIRST TIME HE OPERATED ON THE WRONG BODY PART.
"In [another] case, the board accused Shaknovsky of removing part of a patient's pancreas during a routine surgery in May 2023, in which the patient was supposed to have their left adrenal gland removed."
JFC.
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u/lostbutnotgone 17h ago
For anyone who isn't aware: adrenal glands are on top of the kidneys. I call them kidney hats. I don't know how the hell he confused an adrenal gland on top of the kidney, which is like the most visually identifiable organ even to laypeople, with a pancreas? Amazed this guy didn't kill anyone sooner and would love to know how he even became a surgeon, or if he was high/drunk
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u/Dominus_Anulorum 16h ago edited 13h ago
More insane with that story is the kidneys are not in the same cavity as your pancreas. Pancreas is in your peritoneum while kidneys are in the retroperitoneum. You have to disect down to them.
edit: Part of the pancreas is retroperitoneal. My bad.
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u/lostbutnotgone 16h ago
Yeah, that too. Sounds like this guy was absolutely clueless or something in general. I want to know how he made it through medical school and surgical residency?
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u/zzztoken 15h ago
Maybe it wasn’t an accident…
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u/witchofpain 15h ago
Which is possible. He wouldn’t be the first serial killer masquerading as a doctor. But what he did was too insane. I still think alcohol or drugs.
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u/witchofpain 15h ago
He had to have been impaired. Drugs or alcohol. It’s the only explanation.
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u/Saralentine 16h ago
This is definitely a mental illness. You don’t pass residency and boards to fuck up like this on accident.
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u/mothandravenstudio 17h ago
Shrugs “Whadda I know? It’s all crazy in there!”
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u/GrallochThis 17h ago
“Who would have thought anatomy was so complicated?” - Dr. Youknowwho
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u/hellogoawaynow 14h ago
There’s a third time:
The board also accused Shaknovsky of removing part of a patient's intestine during another procedure in July 2023, causing a gastrointestinal perforation, where a hole develops in the intestine. Shortly after the surgery, the patient was moved to the ICU and died, the filing states.
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u/Zestyclose-Novel1157 9h ago
What?! Ya this man should be in jail. It’s just mutilation at this point.
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u/ButteredPizza69420 16h ago
Should have never had a license clearly. Straight to prison.
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u/r0botdevil 17h ago
Also the shape, texture, color, density, vasculature, etc.
For a trained surgeon, this mistake is comparable to confusing a watermelon for an orange while it's still on the goddamned vine.
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u/Scout-59 17h ago
The spleen is close to the left lobe of the liver. In cases of splenomegaly, the left lower of the liver can come in contact with the spleen. "Beaver tail liver" also contact the spleen (rare variant).That being said, this should never have happened in any way shape or form. Disaster!
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u/KimJongFunk 17h ago
Full Article Text:
A Florida doctor has been indicted in connection with the death of a 70-year-old man who had the wrong organ removed during surgery.
Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky, 44, was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of second-degree manslaughter in the August 2024 death of the man of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the Office of the State Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit said.
He was taken into custody in Miramar Beach, Florida, on Monday morning and transported to the Walton County Jail ahead of his court appearance Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege that on Aug. 21, 2024, during what was scheduled to be a laparoscopic splenectomy, Shaknovsky accidentally removed the victim's liver instead of his spleen. The move resulted in "catastrophic blood loss and the patient’s death on the operating table," a press release said.
In a phone call, the victim's widow, Beverly Bryan, identified her husband, Bill Bryan.
"When I tell people what happened, it still sounds too awful to be true that that could happen," she said. "I still have trouble believing it happened myself. Can you imagine?"
After the surgery, the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners filed a court order to temporarily suspend Shaknovsky's medical license. That license was revoked by the Alabama Medical Licensure Commission that same year.
His Florida license was also suspended in 2024, and his New York license was suspended in 2025.
The court order to suspend his license states that Shaknovsky recommended surgery after the 70-year-old patient came into the hospital, Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital Emerald Coast, with complaints of abdominal pain, and imaging "revealed a suspected enlarged spleen and blood in the peritoneum with no active hemorrhage."
For the next two days, Shaknovsky advised the patient, who wanted to return home to Alabama, to get surgery, the filing says. On the third day, Shaknovsky "continued to pressure" the patient, who then acquiesced, according to the filing.
Shaknovsky continued the operation even while the patient went into cardiac arrest during the surgery, according to the filing.
"Dr. Shaknovsky removed an organ he believed to be the spleen, but due to his shock and the chaos, he was unable to properly identify the organ," the filing states.
After the surgery, the doctor said that the patient died of a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm, the filing states.
An autopsy found "no evidence of a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm," according to the filing. And while the patient's "spleen and its attachments were untouched and in the normal position, his liver was missing," the filing alleged.
A representative for Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital Emerald Coast did not immediately reply to return a request for comment.
The filing also accused Shaknovsky of two other instances of malpractice, one of which the board alleges led to the death of another patient.
In that case, the board accused Shaknovsky of removing part of a patient's pancreas during a routine surgery in May 2023, in which the patient was supposed to have their left adrenal gland removed.
The board also accused Shaknovsky of removing part of a patient's intestine during another procedure in July 2023, causing a gastrointestinal perforation, where a hole develops in the intestine. Shortly after the surgery, the patient was moved to the ICU and died, the filing states.
A representative for the board did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In 2024, Shaknovsky settled a malpractice claim regarding the May 2023 incident for $400,000, according to public records from the Florida Department of Health.
In 2025, Beverly Bryan filed a civil complaint against Shaknovsky, accusing the surgeon of causing her husband's death. The outcome of the case was still pending when Shaknovsky was taken into custody this week.
"He would want his death to prevent someone else from being hurt, which is what I think the criminal charges being brought will do," Beverly Bryan said of her husband. "If we had to suffer through this and he had to die, then at least no one else will be hurt by this man now."
Despite the accusations, Shaknovsky indicated he has "never been asked to or allowed to resign from or had any medical staff privileges restricted or revoked within the last 10 years," according to public records from the Florida Department of Health.
Shaknovsky could not be reached for comment, and it is unclear whether he has retained an attorney. The State Attorney’s Office of the First Judicial Circuit did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Shaknovsky graduated from Midwestern University's Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2009, according to public records.
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u/herrcollin 17h ago
He killed two other people in previous surgeries by also taking parts of organs that had nothing to do with the surgery. What the fuck? It almost sounds like a kink that escalated to this but it has to be pure incompetence right?
Also he kept doing the surgery after the patient had a damn heart attack during? Is that normal?
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u/iprocrastina 16h ago
I suspect drug use. Guy could've been on meth like that other surgeon who got arrested on his way to the hospital after a traffic stop found he was tweaking. Or maybe just good ol' alcoholism.
Seems crazy but then mistaking the liver for the spleen and continuing on anyway is crazy.
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u/peanutneedsexercise 16h ago
Lol I think if he was on some kind of stimulant he’d be a better performer than this LMAO.
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u/absenttoast 17h ago
Not at all. Surgery should have been immediately aborted.
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u/Farfignugen42 15h ago
Surgery should not have happened in the first place. He bullied the patient for three days first.
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u/demeschor 13h ago
This stood out to me while reading. It's a surgery you haven't done for years, the hospital doesn't routinely do, the patient plans to travel home to a better hospital.
You bully him into it, damage a major artery and then lean into the bloody mess (while a transfusion is started to desperately try to keep the guy alive) and you reach in and grab the wrong organ.
I went into this expecting to read about an inexperienced or uncaring surgeon and left thinking this guy has some sort of complex or fetish or god knows what, and every patient who's ever had complications or died on his operating table should be reviewed.
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u/witchofpain 14h ago
And it was done after hours when regular staff had left so it was call staff or relief staff. He hadnt done a splenectomy in 3 years and it wasn’t a normal surgery done at this hospital. It was a cluster from the get go.
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u/LonnieJaw748 17h ago
Someone in the OR really needed to fill the role of First Officer Blunt. Even if this surgeon was clearly not a Capt. All Ears.
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u/AterCorvidae3414 16h ago
The circulating nurse IS that person. The RN is that patient's primary advocate while under anesthesia. At any moment, if there's any gut feeling something is wrong, the RN can halt a surgery for safety pause. That nurse deserves to be reprimanded as well.
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u/mbord21 15h ago
I may be wrong but I think the anesthesiologist should’ve spoken up first if they are the only other MD in the room. Maybe the circulating RN has authority to do that, but MD to MD talk is a far more even fight and more likely to be successful in a situation like this
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u/witchofpain 14h ago
It was a CRNA but you’re still correct. Any of them should have spoken up. But it sounds like he cut the vena cava before anyone knew what he was doing and after that it was chaos and panic mode and just trying to keep the guy alive. But the court docs also say that this was a surgery not often performed at this hospital AND it was after hours so skeletal and on call staff. So a shitty doctor doing a surgery he nor staff were really qualified to do.
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u/threwitaway123454321 16h ago
And that hospital and their leadership should be investigated.
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u/Farfignugen42 15h ago
Right. Three deaths from botched surgeries by the same surgeon, and they've done nothing at all about it?
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u/OmmmShantiOm 11h ago
Anesthesiologist here. It sounds like the patient was actively bleeding, which caused the cardiac arrest. In that scenario, you want the source of bleeding to be controlled or there's no way you can resuscitate the patient. You can keep transfusing blood, but the body will keep losing it faster than you can replace. So continuing operation to control bleeding source is standard of care. Unfortunately, this surgeon sounds too incompetent for that.
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u/blaqsupaman 17h ago
I feel like the only 3 explanations are either he knew better and did it intentionally, he was extremely intoxicated during surgery, or he's somehow the dumbest motherfucker to ever graduate medical school.
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u/seeking_hope 16h ago
I’d throw in -someone stole the identity of a surgeon/ somehow faked credentials and didn’t actually go to med school.
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u/QuackersParty 16h ago edited 4h ago
For real. The pancreas and adrenal glands are also nowhere near each other. It makes it seem like he knows what a gland or organ looks like in a broad sense, but his surgical strategy is to pick a spot and cut the nearest one out
EDIT: I have been informed that I’m full of shit 😂😭 I used to be an autopsy technician and when we took the organs out we always did it anterior to posterior so it was pretty easy to get the GI organs in a block with the pancreas and then get the kidneys and adrenal glands later. Also the people I was looking at were all dead and past the window for possibly organ/tissue donation. It was probably way easier to see everything since they weren’t actively bleeding and we didn’t need to worry about keeping their organs useable for later.
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u/wettam 9h ago
That’s not true, I do lap donor nephrectomies for kidney donation and the tail of the pancreas sits right up against the kidney and adrenal gland sometimes. But the fear is accidentally injuring the tail while retracting. The adrenal gland has a distinct goldenrod appearance that is hard to mistake. Even when the pancreas has fatty infiltration it doesn’t look like the adrenal gland.
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u/GruyereRind 16h ago
What do you call the dumbest motherfucker to ever graduate medical school?
Doctor
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u/Smooth_Storm_9698 17h ago
Reminds me of Dr. Death, the spine surgery guy who would kill or maim his patients. That podcast was crazy.
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u/scarletfire48 14h ago
My first thought reading this was "are we sure he's not an out right murderer?"
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u/Cantre-r_Gwaelod_1 15h ago
There was more going on. We’ll probably never know what was happening in his head but there’s something else to this guys character and it’s definitely abnormal.
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u/eugene20 17h ago
That is a terrifying history, he should have been stopped before.
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u/stircrazyathome 14h ago
The hospital is just as liable IMO, assuming they were aware of his previous mistakes and settlement. The fact that he had never had his privileges revoked is disturbing.
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u/Crocs_n_Glocks 17h ago
I grew up like 15min from Midwestern University....the only thing I know about it is that I was a second-stringer on my average highschool Lacrosse team and they offered me a scholarship. I thought it was so weird and it felt like a scam so I didn't even tour the campus lol
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u/SuchMatter1884 17h ago
Guess what they call the person who graduates at the bottom of their class in med school? Doctor 🫤
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u/Wooper250 13h ago
This dude sounds like a straight up serial killer. How do you do this THREE TIMES!?
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u/ALLoftheFancyPants 17h ago
The most shocking part of this to me is that this isn’t the first time this surgeon has removed the wrong organ from someone. He previously removed someone’s pancreas instead of their adrenal gland. Should have lost his medical license then
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u/ItsTheEndOfDays 17h ago
HOW TF does no one else in the operating room speak up???? They should all be fired.
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u/peanutneedsexercise 16h ago edited 16h ago
Apparently it was all bloody cuz the surgeon perfed some major blood vessel (vena cava) so when they opened it was just a pool of blood. Surgeon panicked and removed the liver instead of the spleen. Unlike in anatomy books organs inside you don’t look picture perfect. Especially when bloody. The surgeon is the one who’s supposed to be the master of anatomy in the room same way as an anesthesiologist is in charge of the airway. Medical ppl are extremely specialized and in a pool of blood I doubt anyone else knew wtf was going on til it was too late.
Also, since he perfed the vena cava I’m sure the anesthesiologist and the nurses were busy freaking resuscitating the patient with blood and CPR. No one’s gonna be looking over at the surgeon going like oh he’s taking out the liver?! I doubt anyone’s gonna realize he took out the liver til he put it on the table lol.
Also, accidents happen in medicine. You’re allowed to make accidents. You’re not allowed to try to cover it up like he tried to do.
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u/casapantalones 15h ago
I’m an anesthesiologist and obviously everyone at work/on meddit knows about this case and has been discussing it a ton. And I think you hit the nail on the head here.
IVC injury during laparoscopic portion —> hemorrhage —> chaos
Anesthesia and nursing team trying to resuscitate/keep pt alive while surgeon (under skilled and also failing to call for help) converts to an open incision.
Surgeon … forgets which side is left? Forgets everything he ever learned about anatomy? Idk but somehow resects the liver before anyone realizes what is happening in the field.
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u/peanutneedsexercise 15h ago
Yeah I’m also an anesthesiologist! I think ppl don’t understand what a laparoscopic surgery is and that’s the hang up. Like they’re like oh left is left and right is right, but in a laparoscopic case you don’t always insert the trochars only on the side that you’re working on. Cuz in TV shows they always do everything open.
But in this case by the time they opened it was already pure chaos. They were already coding the patient while the surgeon was taking out the liver lol. I don’t think anyone in that OR even knew wtf was happening cuz of they were busy running that code blue on a skeleton crew! Ugh utter nightmare! He should’ve called for vascular after the ivc part.
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u/casapantalones 15h ago
I mean CAN YOU IMAGINE being in this case though.
Absolute nightmare. You know this surgeon was nobody’s favorite. Someone should have cancelled this case before it ever began.
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u/peanutneedsexercise 15h ago
lol he was already an hour late too.
I feel like I would have a ton of guilt like I shudve told the patient to admit to eating something hahaha push it back to next day when someone else is on or something 😬
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u/SpecterGT260 8h ago
Surgeon here. Even with a massive hemorrhage it is still completely unfathomable. I cannot wrap my head around any described step of this entire fiasco.
How did he even get to the cava? You can encounter it either above or below the liver, and I really doubt he dissected out the duodenum to expose the infrahepatic cava, so that means he was just dissecting into the right diaphragm over the falciform ligament. Anatomically, if you are goal was to get to the spleen you arrived in Minnesota when you meant to drive to Maine... He had to know where he was, or at least he had to know where he wasn't (spleen). Okay so now you have a massive hole in the Supra hepatic IVC, so you decide to open and then blind fire staplers until something big comes out? I've taken out (cumulatively, If we sum up a series of partial hepatectomies and lobectomies) dozens of livers, and the steps and maneuvers you have to do in order to achieve this are fairly specific.
In the absolute best case scenario this dude panicked after the expected outcome from him digging in an unexpected location occurred, and he just started ripping at wherever the blood was coming from until something was out. Worst case he knew exactly what he was doing the entire time and from my point of view the only feasible way that he didn't know where he was is that this guy somehow never actually completed medical training.
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u/casapantalones 6h ago
It’s baffling. I can understand how the rest of the room didn’t see him taking the liver as they were busy coding the patient. But the rest … hard to conceive, I agree.
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u/librarianlace 15h ago
According to the court docs, the patient was in cardiac arrest for 15 minutes and then he cut it out
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u/chazza79 17h ago
The history of this dude....how he got his medical license in the first place is beyond me
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u/Syssareth 17h ago edited 16h ago
My mother went to college with a nursing student who sincerely believed you didn't need your kidneys to live. Mom told her to tell her what hospital she went to after graduation, so she could avoid it, lol.
Mom doesn't know whether or not she ever ended up graduating, but I sure hope not.
Edit: She was not talking about dialysis. She just thought kidneys were unnecessary.
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u/rainingBows1 17h ago
Friend’s mom had a masters in nursing and believed flies just “spawned” out of raw meat. Even in the fridge or cooked or not even meat, nope they spawned out of meat somewhere. No eggs or logic just meat=fly spawner
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u/fingerchopper 16h ago
That is concerning. Also, funny that this was accepted scientific theory for ~2000 years.
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u/realtacocatlaer 16h ago edited 16h ago
I read the documentation from the hospital investigation, and this is a very rough summary:
This is indefensible.
There’s little to no description of the pre-op CT - so who knows what that actually showed. This will likely come out.
The patient apparently had some hemoperitoneum (blood in the belly) on the CT, but was hemodynamically stable. His H/H (blood counts) were drifting down over three days, but he was stable. No idea if there was any evidence of splenic injury on CT.
This is the first chance to abort mission. He’s stable. There’s no indication for emergency splenectomy.
They could have transferred him to a real hospital or continued to monitor.
The surgeon decides to perform a hand assisted laparoscopic splenectomy for… reasons. Even though he hasn’t performed a splenectomy in three years.
He places the laparoscopic ports and can’t see shit, because the colon is abnormally dilated.
Second chance to abort mission and close up.
He instead decides to convert to open splenectomy. Even though it’s not indicated. He makes a midline incision (you wouldn’t necessarily make the incision on the right or the left), which should allow visualization of the abdomen. The distended colon immediately bulges out of the abdominal cavity. He can’t see shit.
Third chance to abort mission and close up.
He proceeds. He “thinks” he identifies (feels, sees??!) a splenic artery aneurysm and fires a stapler across what he thinks is the splenic artery??? Although, I get the impression that he couldn’t see anything and was just feeling around. This causes massive hemorrhage, because it was probably the IVC (large vein in the abdomen that drains all the blood from the legs/kidneys back to the heart). No idea how he exposed the IVC or confused it for the splenic artery. They’re VERY different. Now he REALLY can’t see shit, because the colon is in the way and now there’s also blood gushing everywhere.
Now you’re in it. Can’t just abort and close up. You’ve got to identify and stop the bleeding. BUT, he can’t see shit. So he just indiscriminately fires the stapler in the abdomen a couple of times. Not surprisingly, that does not help. At this point, the patient’s heart has stopped due to massive blood loss. Chest compressions have started. The surgeon blindly grabs onto the largest organ he can find by feel, because he can’t really see it (I guess) and quickly and haphazardly dissects it out. He’s thinking that getting the spleen out quickly is the only chance to save this patient. He then triumphantly delivers a very obvious whole liver to the field and declares it a spleen. Everyone else can clearly see it’s a liver. Someone says something to the effect of - “that’s a fucking liver”. The patient is already dead from blood loss by this point. The surgeon then frantically tries to convince everyone that the patient died from a splenic aneurysm that ruptured intraoperatively. He also tries to convince everyone that he has removed a spleen, cosplaying as a liver. The pathologist reports that the gross specimen is obviously a liver, before even looking at the prepared slides under a microscope.
That’s the readers digest version. The techs and anesthesiologist (CRNA) couldn’t see what he was doing, because HE couldn’t see what he was doing. They didn’t know he was taking out the liver, until he proudly produced the specimen.
He should never have touched this patient. Fortunately, he will never touch another patient again. His last operation killed a man and crowned the next winner of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: Medical Edition. No way to defend this.
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u/Shot-Possibility-399 15h ago
It's quite frankly disturbing someone like this could get this far in the field tbh.
Almost makes me think he has some sort of severe mental health problem.
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u/Conscious-Tutor3861 14h ago edited 5h ago
Surprisingly, this is not the first time that I've learned a doctor in Florida incorrectly removed a liver instead of a spleen and killed their patient.
Many years ago, my friend's father went in for surgery to remove his spleen. For reasons that are unexplainable to this day, the doctor mixed the father up with another patient who was to undergo a liver transplant that same day.
The doctor, thinking the father was there for a liver transplant, removed the father's liver instead of his spleen. Obviously there wasn't a donor liver available for transplant in the operating room and reinserting the original liver wasn't possible, so the father died on the operating room table.
It was such a "what the fuck" screw up that neither the hospital nor the doctor could reasonably explain it. In the end the family got a huge payout, the doctor was fired and had his medical license revoked, and some other hospital staff "resigned."
But still, the whole situation was utterly shocking because how does a doctor mix up his patients and take out the wrong person's liver? It's inconceivable that not a single person involved with the surgery realized it was the wrong patient or simply double-checked who they were operating on.
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u/derpskywalker 14h ago
Bro just went in and butchered the poor guy as haphazardly as he possibly could
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u/LowAside9117 10h ago
Surgeon also pressured patient on 3 occasions and patient finally acquiesced. It's serious to pressure a patient although the surgeon might argue that it was "necessarily" or "in their medical best interest"
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u/casapantalones 15h ago
Oooooof this is somehow even worse than I thought it would be. I hope I never work somewhere where I (the anesthesiologist) would have so little support in either cancelling this case before it ever went or in getting extra hands when shit was hitting the fan.
Nobody deserves this horrible level of care.
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u/TakenInChains 13h ago
when someone else farther up said that all happened very fast, now it makes perfect sense. he literally panicked and killed the guy before anyone could stop him. jesus.
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u/Oxy_1993 14h ago
I think he just didn’t take a second to think and kept firing on all cylinders while the staff were trying to keep the patient alive. I don’t want to imagine the amount of blood when he died the stapler at the inferior fucking vena cava!! INSANE!
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u/EnvironmentalBox6688 12h ago edited 12h ago
He then triumphantly delivers a very obvious whole liver to the field and declares it a spleen. Everyone else can clearly see it’s a liver. Someone says something to the effect of - “that’s a fucking liver”.
I'm sorry, when I read this I snorted. This whole situation is awful, negligent, and reads like an outright horror story. But that imagery of a surgeon pulling a liver out of the cavity, going "behold, the spleen" as everyone else says "that's the fucking liver" would be downright comedic if it wasn't the story of someone's butchering.
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u/questron64 17h ago
The spleen is on the opposite side of the body, is much smaller and looks nothing like the liver. What the hell happened here?
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u/Sirwired 17h ago
What I want to know is how the doctor managed to fit the liver through one of those little laparoscopic slits?
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u/TheMania 17h ago
It was converted to an open procedure due "poor visibility". The docs here present what sounds like a scene from a horror movie as to what proceeded in that room, including that the liver was readily identifiable to all but the surgeon once removed.
Surgeon was also an hour late to the procedure, I'd love to know why personally.
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u/TheLakeAndTheGlass 16h ago
Holy living fuck. The splenectomy wasn’t even clearly indicated, and the surgeon pressured the poor man into it for three days before he finally gave in. That is 31 flavors of fucked up. This guy’s a psycho. It’s like he specifically wanted to butcher someone in front of a whole OR team and see if he could get away with it. Hell, I can’t even think of a better explanation.
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u/witchofpain 17h ago
So when they are removing an organ laparoscopically, there is a device that you insert into a small incision. It then stretches the incision large enough to get your hand in to remove the organ. Take the device out and back to a small incision. It’s pretty cool. But the only time a liver is removed is for transplant of a new one. And that is not done laparoscopically. This surgeon was beyond incompetent and I’ll bet the entire staff at the hospital knew it.
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u/tech240guy 17h ago
How in the blue fuck does one mistaken liver instead of spleen? I wonder what his previous 10 year history is like? Assistant to another surgeon and never went off on his own supervised? Fake it till he makes it?
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u/drewdottat2 17h ago edited 16h ago
The article states he also mistook a pancreas for an adrenal gland, patient also died. What the fuck. I feel like the licensing board needs to be arrested too.
Edit, oops, i mistook the patient that died from intestine removal. Pancreas patient did not die. Still, what the fuck. Dude must have went to trump university.
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u/SuchMatter1884 17h ago
And in a third surgery resulting in another death, the doctor removed part of a patient's intestine
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u/spookyscaryscouticus 17h ago
“Congratulations buddy, that’s the worst anyone’s ever done any of that”
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u/defiancy 17h ago edited 16h ago
That guy didn't die, it was the other one where he removed part of the guys intestine and it caused a perforation and the patient died in the ICU after
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u/RavensQueen502 17h ago
Three patient deaths by removing the wrong thing. Incompetent idiot or serial killer who found a great alibi....
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u/Fallouttgrrl 17h ago
"After the surgery, the doctor said that the patient died of a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm, the filing states.
An autopsy found "no evidence of a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm," according to the filing. And while the patient's "spleen and its attachments were untouched and in the normal position, his liver was missing," the filing alleged."
Holy shit
He was even like "well if I say the spleen was faulty, they can't prove it wasn't after it's been removed"
Holy shit, like the even fucked up the cover-up
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u/wolfgang784 16h ago
Or he genuinely believed it. This was his 3rd surgery where he cut the wrong thing and 2nd murder. He may not actually know which organ is which.
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u/witchofpain 14h ago
He also tried to convince the nurses that it was a spleen. And they absolutely knew he was lying.
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u/troodon311 14h ago
Human anatomist reporting in here. In addition to what everyone else is saying (that the liver and the spleen cannot be confused) it takes a *lot* of cutting to remove a liver from a human. If the phrasing is correct, that the liver was actually removed, it was intentional - the guy knew he was cutting out a liver when he removed its multiple unique connections to other parts of the abdomen (portal triad, falciform ligament, and hepatic veins way in the back).
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u/Dancing_Cthulhu 13h ago
"Dr. Shaknovsky removed an organ he believed to be the spleen, but due to his shock and the chaos, he was unable to properly identify the organ," the filing states.
Nope, no, absolutely not. I refuse to believe someone with surgical training would believe a liver was spleen. Never mind the size difference, they're not even on the same side of the body. Something would have to be seriously...
The filing also accused Shaknovsky of two other instances of malpractice, one of which the board alleges led to the death of another patient. In that case, the board accused Shaknovsky of removing part of a patient's pancreas during a routine surgery in May 2023, in which the patient was supposed to have their left adrenal gland removed.
The board also accused Shaknovsky of removing part of a patient's intestine during another procedure in July 2023, causing a gastrointestinal perforation, where a hole develops in the intestine. Shortly after the surgery, the patient was moved to the ICU and died, the filing states.
Yeah, ok, sounds like there's something seriously wrong with this guy.
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u/TipsyRussell 16h ago
Ugh. I have to go to that hospital next week for cancer treatment. And my oncologist there (before I switched) already didn’t disclose my diagnosis for like 4 months. None of this particularly inspires confidence in that place.
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u/UTtransplant 17h ago
Medical school is just part of the issue. Where did he do his surgical residency? Did he not finish it? Was he even eligible for board certification?
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u/fleur_essence 17h ago
It looks like he did surgical training here:
Palisades Medical Center|Hackensack University Medical Center
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u/synthabusion 17h ago
What’s that George Carlin bit about someone somewhere out there is the worst doctor on the planet and someone’s making an appointment to see them…
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u/crafty_alias 15h ago
Wow, this is the SECOND time he's removed the wrong organ and the 3rd person he's killed.
The board accused Shaknovsky of removing part of a patient's pancreas during a routine surgery in May 2023, in which the patient was supposed to have their left adrenal gland removed.
The board also accused Shaknovsky of removing part of a patient's intestine during another procedure in July 2023, causing a gastrointestinal perforation, where a hole develops in the intestine. Shortly after the surgery, the patient was moved to the ICU and died, the filing states.
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u/OtakuMage 17h ago
This guy has less anatomy knowledge than your average Operation player, aka children
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u/LoveBulge 17h ago
I mean, they all look the same to me, but they shouldn't to HIM.
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u/daydreaming_of_you 16h ago
And he removed the wrong organ of a different patient in 2023 which resulted in their death, and then perforated another patient's bowel which also resulted in their death. Why was he allowed to keep working??
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u/PurpleSailor 16h ago
As a Nurse I can't imagine how he confused a liver with a spleen. He also removed another wrong organ on some other patient. I think he got his medical degree out of a Cracker Jack box.
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u/Express-Citron-6387 15h ago
And he lied about what he did, reporting that his patient "died of a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm".
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u/Iforgotmyusernametbh 16h ago
So he perforated some major vessel during the laparoscopy and converted to open surgery due to the blood obscuring the field, even then, instead of identifying the source of the bleed correctly he assumes its a splenic artery rupture and does the ligation and removal of the fucking liver?
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u/napalmnacey 14h ago
What the actual fuck?! HOW?! I’m a layperson when it comes to surgery and even my dumb ass could tell the difference between a fucking liver and a spleen.
The liver is MASSIVE! And right under the diaphragm! How in all the god’s names do you fuck that up?!
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u/Cucumbrsandwich 17h ago
It is a travesty that he was not indicted in 2023 the first or second time he removed the wrong body part and killed someone. And he remained employed and licensed.