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  1. #1
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    Dr Death Podcast

    https://wondery.com/shows/dr-death/

    What an amazing show though given how derange this doctor is

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...-patients.html

    Dr Duntsch, as described by the peers journalist Laura Beil interviewed, was always a guy with something to prove.

    He would stay late after high school football practices, running through the drills he hadn't gotten right over and over again.

    But once he was cloaked in the white coat and had the prefix 'Dr' affixed to his name, Duntsch became hard to question.

    Over the span of 18 months, he performed botched surgeries on dozens of patients. Two of them did not survive.

    His patients, though, had little way of knowing who they were about to allow to open their body cavities and carve away.

    A recent survey found that 34 percent of patients rely on their own independent research to choose a health care provider.

    But other recent research has shown that Americans have limited knowledge of nutrition, something they encounter regularly. It is hard to imagine that most of us would be able to distinguish competent spinal surgeon from a negligent one.

    Dr Duntsch had his medical degree as well as his PhD from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and arrived in Dallas with glowing recommendations from his professors and colleagues at the labs he ran.

    Patients were unaware of the accounts that Duntsch stayed out all night at drug-fueled parties before putting on his white coat and heading to work, as a friend described during his 2015 trial.

    Nor were they aware of the erratic email he sent back in 2011, in which Dr Duntsch ranted that he was comparable to a god, Einstein and the antichrist all rolled into one, and even described himself as on the verge of becoming a cold blooded killer.

    Doctors and surgical nurses who saw Dr Duntsch operate were appalled at his haphazard 'technique,' volatility and cavalier attitude toward his patients' well-being +4
    Doctors and surgical nurses who saw Dr Duntsch operate were appalled at his haphazard 'technique,' volatility and cavalier attitude toward his patients' well-being

    So Mary Efurd saw no reason not to trust Dr Duntsch to help her get free from back pain, Beil reports. Efurd was one of the 24 percent of people who takes a friend's advice about doctors.

    He'd made a thorough surgical plan and shared it with Efurd. It looked solid, but as Dr Robert Henderson discovered later, that wasn't the surgery the Dr Duntsch ultimately performed.

    On the day of Efurd's surgery, another of Dr Duntsch's surgical patients was transferred to the ICU there at Dallas Medical Center.

    Seemingly unfazed, but possibly frazzled by drugs, a surgical nurse tells Beil, Dr Duntsch went ahead with the surgery, becoming aggravated when he was told that the hospital wasn't equipped to perform the craniotomy he wanted to use to relieve pressure on Efurd's brain.

    He placed a screw into the muscle of her back, and left her on the table, spine and misplaced screw open and exposed, for 15 minutes.

    Nothing about the surgery went well. He continued to snap at surgical nurses, X-ray tech, and seemed to simply declare the surgery over at will, Beil reports.

    When she awoke after surgery, Efurd - whom Biel describes as 'tough' - was in excruciating pain.

  2. #2
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    https://www.esquire.com/news-politic...ilip-mayfield/

    s Philip Mayfield prepared for spinal surgery, he stared into the bright operating room lights and said a silent prayer to God. I’m grateful to you, the Most High, he thought, I know you will protect me from all form of danger, and keep me safe.

    Then, the anesthesia took over and Philip’s world went dark.

    When he came to eight hours later, a crowd of panicked nurses surrounded his recovery bed.

    "Mr. Mayfield, can you move your legs for us?" they asked.

    image
    Philip Mayfield
    Courtesy Angela Mayfield

    His body felt heavy and uncomfortable. He tried lifting his arms and wiggling his toes, but nothing moved.

    "Mr. Mayfield, we really need you to try and move your legs," they pleaded.

    I am! he thought. Then he realized what the nurses had likely already surmised: I must be paralyzed.

    On April 9, 2013, the 48-year-old Dallas, Texas truck driver went in for a 45-minute surgery to alleviate chronic back pain, the result of nearly two decades behind the wheel of his tractor-trailer. He left the operating room unable to move from the neck down.

    Philip is one of more than 30 people maimed by Dr. Christopher Duntsch, nicknamed Dr. Death by the media. Over the course of 18-months, the nefarious ex-surgeon performed a spree of botched operations that resulted in two deaths and multiple cases of paralysis, including that of his childhood friend. Duntsch is currently serving a life sentence in prison for deliberately maiming a patient.

    His malpractice is the focus of a new Wondery podcast from the creators of Dirty John, called Dr. Death, now available on iTunes. The six-part series delves into the egregious failure of the healthcare system to stop Duntsch—and the tragic stories of those he damaged, like Philip, during their most vulnerable state.

    For nearly 20 years, Philip drove his 18-wheeler from his home in Texas to Louisiana and Oklahoma as a professional truck driver. “I loved my job,” he says. “You get to experience so many different things and see different places and meet new people. Some people say, ‘How can you drive for so many hours a day?’ But, to me, driving was so relaxing.”

    Over time, however, the constant loading and unloading of goods led to severe back and neck pain and, eventually, a disc herniation. In 2012, doctors recommended anterior cervical discectomy surgery, a procedure to remove the damaged disc from the spine. It required going through the front of the neck to retrieve the disc.


    For nearly a year, Philip and his wife, Angela Mayfield, 44, researched the surgery, sought opinions from six different doctors, and consulted Medical Board reviews. They eventually settled on Dr. Christopher Duntsch, who was linked to a major hospital system in Dallas. During their first consultation, Duntsch “seemed very confident in what he did,” Philip recalls. “My biggest questions [for him] were did he know what he was doing? And had he ever harmed anyone?”

    Duntsch assured the Mayfields, with confidence, he did these types of surgeries all the time, and Philip would be driving again in just four weeks. “Leaving his clinic, we had a sense of ‘Well, okay [Duntsch] is the one to do this!’” Angela says.

    Three weeks later, on the morning of his surgery, Philip woke up at 5:15 a.m. in preparation for the 6 a.m. appointment. He thought to himself: Let’s do this.

    "Are you ready?" Angela asked on the 20-minute drive to the surgery center.

    "Yes, yes," he assured her. "I just want to get back to work and do what I love."

    image
    From left, Philip Jr., Austel, Angela, Ha’Layalai, and Philip.
    Courtesy Angela Mayfield
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    The couple wasn’t scared or nervous. In fact, they felt calm. They wanted to get the surgery over with, so Angela could get home to whip up lunch for their three kids, Philip Jr., 19, Austel, 15, and Ha’Layalai, 13. “We went in with the expectation that whatever was going on with [Philip’s] neck, it would be taken care of, no problem,” Angela says. “And he’d be back to normal in no time.”

    Once in the pre-operating room, Duntsch took a black marker from his scrubs and drew a line near Philip’s collarbone. "That’s where I’ll be going in to do the procedure," he said.

    Philip prayed to God for a healthy recovery as he laid down on the operating table. Then the anesthesia was administered.

    Duntsch had told the Mayfields the procedure would take 45 minutes at most. So, when Angela didn’t hear anything for an hour, she got worried. After two hours, she paced the waiting room floor in a panic. Hospital administrators assured her a nurse would deliver an update soon. But no one did. “I had a [bad] feeling that something was going on,” Angela says. “Nobody was giving me answers.”

    At 1:30 p.m. Duntsch finally entered the waiting room and sat down with Angela.

    image
    Philip in the hospital.
    Courtesy Angela Mayfield
    "Everything went well," he told her. "You can see your husband now."

    Angela grabbed her purse and ran to the recovery room, where nurses surrounded a barely-conscious Philip. “Something was wrong,” Angela says. “The nurses were running around, panicked and nervous, looking like ‘What’s going on?!’ They called for Dr. Duntsch to come in.”

    Duntsch and the nurses attempted to prop up Philip, but he fell over “like a little baby,” Angela says. “He had no control, no support of his own. He was just flopping around.” An excruciating pain was rocketing through Philip’s body and he could barely speak.

    A few hours later, Philip was transferred to a different hospital, where a doctor performed a “pin prick” test to assess reflex abilities and response to pain. He had no feeling in his body, up to his breast line.

    "This is from the surgery," the doctor told him. "This was a botched surgery."

    An MRI scan confirmed the worst: Philip’s spinal cord had been completely deformed. The damage, doctors told the Mayfields, was irreversible. Philip was put on steroids to bring down spinal cord swelling and transferred to the ICU, where he remained for five days.

    “They couldn’t try to [undo] anything that was done, because there was already too much trauma that his body had endured,” Angela says. “It couldn’t be fixed.”

    “They told me I’d never be able to walk again,” Philip adds. “But I told them, ‘Yes I will, yes I will walk again, I have a life that I have to live. I have three boys I need to raise.”

    Philip is just one of Duntsch’s 32 victims maimed at several medical centers in Texas. Not all were lucky enough to survive.

    Kellie Martin’s major artery was slashed during a procedure, and the school teacher, 54, bled to death. Floella Brown, 63, passed away shortly after suffering a massive stroke the day after Duntsch sliced her vertebral artery during surgery.

    image
    Philip in the hospital.
    Courtesy Angela Mayfield
    Brown was still in the ICU when Duntsch began spinal surgery on Mary Efurd, who later woke up hardly able to move her legs. A CT scan found metal spinal fusion hardware that had sunk into the muscles of her lower back, inches from her spine. Duntsch had also amputated a nerve root, according to the Texas Observer.

    The Dr. Death podcast traces Duntsch's rise at the University of Tennessee, a top-tier medical school, to his position at the Baylor University Medical Center, where he was granted surgical privileges.

    Dallas-based journalist Laura Beil hosts the series and interviews doctors, nurses, friends, and several patients. What she found was a shocking number of people who were witness to Duntsch’s atrocities and a healthcare system that failed to stop him.

    According to the Texas Observer, one of Duntsch’s first botched surgeries took place in January 2012 and led to bone fragments from the patient's vertebrae getting lodged in the nerves of his back. Despite his reckless behavior, Duntsch continued operating at various hospitals in Dallas, before losing surgical privileges in June 2013 when fellow surgeons complained to the Texas Medical Board, reports Dallas Magazine. Earlier that month, Duntsch had accidentally cut into a patient's vertebral artery and left a sponge festering in the soft tissue of their throat, per the Texas Observer.

    Beil calls Duntsch an “outlier” in the medical field, but admits that, through her research, she hasn’t found much evidence that anything has changed to prevent something like this from happening in the future.

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    Philip harbors no hate toward the surgeon that ruined his life. Instead, he exacted revenge by attempting to recover. After being released from the hospital in 2013, Philip spent most days in rehab, eventually moving from a wheelchair to a walker to a cane.

    Today, his entire right side and left arm still have some paralysis that can be “very painful,” he says. “I also have weakness in all four limbs, and there’s days I wake up and can’t move.” In 2014, he developed syringomyelia, a painful condition that causes fluid-filled cysts on the spinal cord.

  3. #3
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    https://www.beckersspine.com/spine/i...omplaints.html

    Here is some of the crazy updates to this.

    Infamous former neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, MD, has become the subject of a true crime podcast from Wondery called Dr. Death.

    Before being found guilty of malpractice, Dr. Duntsch was a neurosurgeon in Dallas. He initially lost his medical license in 2013 after a complaint was filed against him related to his behavior; he was eventually indicted on five counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of injury to an elderly person for his actions during surgery. Dr. Duntsch is currently serving a lifetime prison sentence for his behavior.

    The podcast examines Dr. Duntsch's time in the operating room as well as how the healthcare system failed to prevent him from injuring patients, even after patients and colleagues raised concerns about his behavior. In one instance, a fellow surgeon stopped a procedure because he felt Dr. Duntsch was performing with "unacceptable" technique and multiple patients suffered nerve wounds during his operations. According to a New York Times article, more than six physicians and lawyers reported his mistakes to Houston-based Baylor Medical Center, where he worked.

    However, when he left Baylor, the hospital procured a letter reporting a clean medical record. He spent a year practicing after leaving the hospital before a patient bled to death on the operating table.

    The podcast is hosted by Laura Beil, a healthcare and science journalist who spent time as a medical reporter for the Dallas Morning News.

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