Duntsch was offered a $600,000 advance and a temporary suite in a luxury hotel to come to Dallas while the couple searched for a new home in Plano, according to a 2018Dr. Duntsch was also arrested for driving under the influence while staying with his parents in Colorado and found himself in handcuffs another time in April of 2015 after he was arrested for stealing $887.30 in Walmart merchandise, according to theD Magazine. Three weeks later, Duntsch performed a spinal fusion on Jerry Summers, a childhood friend. Why didnt he stop? According to his ex-girlfriend Wendy Young (played by Mollie Griggs in the show), Duntsch is in touch with his two sons. Its hard to find good conversation with a random person, Young told the magazine. The "deadly weapons" were his hands and surgical tools. Doctors brought in to clean up his surgeries decried his surgical misadventures, according to hospital records. Young was soon pregnantbut Duntsch had already developed a wandering eye. Kirby had spent 16 years performing general surgery in the Dallas area, in which time hed assisted on more than 2,000 spine operations. A Texas neurosurgeon accused of intentionally botching multiple spinal surgeries, resulting in the death of two . He nicked the patients vertebral artery, causing the space he was working in to fill with blood. Many of his patients suffered severe spinal cord damage, resulting in paralysis and pain severe enough to render painkillers ineffective. Because he owed people a lot of money. Joshua Jackson as Christopher Duntsch in "Dr. Death." Barbara Nitke/Peacock Duntsch, 50, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 in what's considered a precedent-setting case one of the. Duntsch, an engaging and fast-talking son of missionaries, came to North Texas with uncommon credentials. As Dr. Randall Kirby (a real doctor played by Christian Slater in the show) says in Dr. Death, "He approaches spinal surgery like a child playing with tinker toys." Once Duntsch proved himself inept, hospitals let him resign instead of going through the legal process of firing him. In February 2013, for unclear reasons, the board took his license. .css-ssumvd{display:block;font-family:Gilroy,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:1.0625rem;font-weight:bold;line-height:1.25;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-ssumvd:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-ssumvd{letter-spacing:0rem;margin-top:0.9375rem;}}Gayle King Is Showcasing Women Making Waves, Your Complete Guide to the Bridgerton Family, Jada Pinkett Smiths Red Table Talk Is Canceled, Oprah Wishes Carol Burnett a Happy 90th Birthday, Oprah and Mindy Kaling Are Producing a TV Show, Oprah and Michelle Obama Have a Netflix Special, Gayle Kings Pop Culture Must-See List for April, What We Know About The Little Mermaid Remake, Dr. Death Tells the Horrifying True Story of Christopher Duntsch, The True Story that Inspired Season 2 Dirty John, 20 True-Crime Podcasts You Should Be Listening To, Gayle King Is Showcasing Women Making Waves, email he wrote to former assistant Kimberly Morgan. Jodi Smith. are both available to stream on Peacock now. But no one bothered to tell the Martinsand there was no way for them to knowthat their doctor had left a man paralyzed a month before in a case in which the hospitals own surgeons found him at fault. It was just gone. The romance played out mostly in Duntsch's office at Baylor Plano, where he often did research after hours and drank vodka from a handle of Stoli he kept under his desk, according to D Magazine. He was found guilty of his crimes in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison. The patients mother complained to the Medical Board. Every time a doctor loses clinical privileges at a hospital, or has them suspended, hospitals are required by law to notify the National Practitioner Databank. As they dressed for surgery, Duntsch boasted to Kirby that he was the best neurosurgeon in Dallas. Kalighat MS (Division B) Matches played. Prince Charming, Im gonna change your life, Wendy Young said of the promising start to her romance with Christopher Duntsch. As those watching the show know, Christopher was dubbed "Dr. Death" in D Magazine for his botched surgeries that caused the death of several patients and left others with disabling injuries. Because investigations are confidential, Duntschs public record with the Texas Medical Board remained clean. Dallas Magazine states that Duntsch became key in supplying samples to scientists for research. In December 2012, he performed a cervical fusion at Legacy Surgery Center of Frisco that left his patient with paralyzed vocal cordsan unheard-of complication. Duntschsmedical privileges were revoked by the Texas Medical Board in June of 2013 and Duntschs life continued to spiral from there, according to D Magazine. Elena Nicolaou is the former culture editor at Oprah Daily. Then he waited for several more hours until the nurses came out to tell him and his daughters that Kellie Martin was dead. His younger brother, Nathan, said he had spoken to Duntschs friend and former employee, Jerry Summers, who was left a quadriplegic after one of the botched surgeries. The board cant revoke a license without overwhelming evidence, and investigations can take months, with months or years of costly hearings dragging on afterward. Friends since they played football together in high school, Summers helped Duntsch stay organized while he worked in the lab during his residency. When Duntsch came out, he told Don there had been some complications, and that Kellie would have to stay the night, but that the operation had gone fine. During the summer of 2012, as Duntsch was searching for a new hospital, another doctor who had witnessed Duntschs errors at Baylor sent a complaint about Duntsch to the Medical Board, according to Kirby. It takes the Texas Medical Board an average of nine months to resolve complaints. A 27-year-old Young had been working as a stripper in Memphis when she met Duntsch, then 40. Duntsch grew up in a middle-class family. . In the two years he practiced as a spine surgeon across four Dallas institutions, Duntsch operated on 37 people. Though many were passed off as accidents, a surgeon told D Magazine that these mistakes were "never events" and should not "ever happen in someone's entire career.". The. In 2005, partway through the six-year program, he became the director of the tissue bank. On the tape, Henderson demands to know why Duntsch is still practicing. Hospitals can get all of the benefit of an expensive surgeon practicing in their facility and little of the exposure. But Baylor didnt hold him to that. Shes also worked as a social editor for House Beautiful and had previous writing stints at Redbook,CosmopolitanandSeventeen. Christopher Duntsch shattered that trust over the course of a few years, ruining countless lives. The show consists of interviews with his patients and other people close to the case, as well as the full story of Duntsch's crimes. Here's All That Happened to the Real Christopher Duntsch, The Best Peacock Shows to Start Streaming Now, Leann Rimes Shares Video Montage for Anniversary. I had so much anger, because my life changed so much. When she responds, shes quiet. For 33 patients of Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, it was a reality. AnnaSophia Robb Stars In New Series Dr. The process for resolving complaints is slow and painstaking, set up in statute to guarantee doctors the maximum legal protection. Her spine was pockmarked with screw holes, and a screw had been lodged in another nerve root near the bottom of her spine," D Magazine describes. Duntsch's trial took place in 2017. By all appearances, he had simply decided to leave. Near the end of his report, Kirby wrote, The [Medical Board] must stop this sociopath Duntsch immediately or he will continue [to] maim and kill innocent patients. Perhaps it was the completeness and forcefulness of his presentation, perhaps it was the fact that another neurosurgeon had just joined the board, and he understood as none of the rest did the severity of what Duntsch had done. Duntsch was convicted and sentenced to life behind bars. "As his victims pile up, two fellow physicians and Dallas prosecutor Michelle Shughart set out to stop him.". And all the while, until their cases are resolved, doctorseven those accused of the most heinous malpracticecan continue to practice. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes longer than we want., What Henderson took from this, he told me, is that were dealing with people who dont do the job they are hired to do.. "I think its going to be like a floodgate thats going to really open, crying. According to what his former assistant Kimberly Morgan said in her deposition, Christopher allegedly would regularly drink vodka and kept a handle of Stoli underneath his desk. Alexander Zverev was dumped out in the last 16 of the ATP tournament in Munich, suffering a straight sets defeat to Christopher O'Connell on Thursday. Dr. Robert Henderson, a Dallas-based orthopedic surgeon who worked to alert authorities about Duntsch, had his own take. 2023 . Soon after Summers woke up paralyzed, a woman named Kellie Martin came to see Duntsch at Texas Neurosurgical Institute. Brown was later found unresponsive in her hospital room and staff couldnt contact Duntsch for 90 minutes, according to those records. And the words that his patients and their families desperately wanted to hear. Unlike with Summers, though, he hadnt noticed in time, and Martin bled to death, according to Texas Medical Board records. A charismatic, charming monster but still a monster but he saw himself as the hero of his own story. Im just so grateful from the bottom of my heart, she said. For weeks, jurors heard the accounts of patients who had been maimed or paralyzed in bungled surgeries. Kirby said Duntsch had problems at nearly every step of the operation. He was arrested in 2014 for jumping over the fence atthe home of Youngs sisterin Garland and trying to take their son, Aiden. Another doctor compared Duntsch to Hannibal Lecter three times in eight minutes. In 2012, the public interest research group Public Citizen commissioned a research project to cross-reference doctors sanctioned by the Texas Medical Board with those listed in the National Practitioner Databank, managed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: This article was originally published by the, Articles cannot be rewritten, edited or changed beyond alignments with house style books. The first surgery went fine. Per The Washington Post, when another surgeon named Dr. Robert Henderson went in to investigate, he was shocked to find spinal hardware left in her soft tissue, a severed nerve root, a nerve with a screw in it and several screw holes on a different area of Mary's spine. Finally the family fired him. It is said to be rare for a physician to be indicted on several counts of aggravated assault stemming from events in an operating room. Its left to hospitals to police their doctors. Goals scored. We felt confident too.. On June 26, the board held an emergency meeting and suspended Duntschs license. His father, Don Duntsch, spoke with pride about how his son had once been one of the top authorities on stem cells and had done ground-breaking cancer research. Dubbed "Dr. Death," the case gained national attention, revealing how easy. As a result, one patient died from a massive blood lost. Partners must notify. Every patient that I interviewed told me that one of the first things Dr. Duntsch would tell them when they initially met was that he was the best surgeon in Dallas," Henderson, played by Alec Baldwin in the show, told People. This was a voice for Kellie, said Don Martin, whose wife bled to death after one of those botched surgeries in 2012. Hed made multiple screw holes on the left everywhere but where he had needed to be. We moved in together within three months, and then I became pregnant.. He said that Summers had broken down in to uncontrolled crying and said, I know your brother would never do this to me on purpose.. That veneer is how Duntsch was able to set up a practice in Dallas and obtain surgical privileges at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Plano, Texas. (So far only Mary Efurd and the family of Floella Brown have filed suit against Duntsch, though the other patients or their families have all retained counsel as well.). He faxed over a picture of Duntsch to the residency program at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center to see if Duntsch had graduated. And still it took the Texas Medical Board more than a year to stop Duntscha year in which he kept bringing into the operating room patients who ended up seriously injured or dead. "Ninety-nine percent of everything that has been said about me is completely false.". Hes lost everything.. The Texas Medical Board finally suspended Duntsch's license on June 26, 2013, and permanently revoked it in December of that year. For two days the patient, Jeffrey Glidewell, lay unattended in the ICU while Duntsch made excuses to the family. He wrote grants and secured more than $3 million in funding. He was horrified to realize that Duntsch was going to keep practicing. Of that set, two died and 31 were paralyzed or seriously injured. Texas law states that hospitals are liable for damages caused by doctors in their facilities only if the plaintiff can prove that the hospital acted with malicethat is, the hospital knew of extreme risk and ignored itin credentialing a doctor. At first, Henderson thought Duntsch might be an impostor. In July 2012, four months after Kellie Martins death, Duntsch applied for surgical privileges at Dallas Medical Center. Nicknamed "Dr. Death," the story of Duntsch's egregious medical crimes and the healthcare system that failed so. It's a good questionand one that Dr. Death details, along with the surprisingly difficult fight to revoke his license. According to Kirby, the hospital owner told him that Duntsch had privileges to do only minimally invasive surgeries. But it wouldnt be the end of the trouble between the pair. Kirby called the owner of University General. He had a slick marketing team in Best Docs Network, a physician PR company that pumps out infomercials to local TV stations. A poorly put-together case can mean months or years of expensive litigation. At his home and office, my calls rang and rang before going to voicemail boxes that were full. Rather than immediately ordering scans to find out what was wrong, Duntsch moved on to other patients, according to Kirbys letter to the Medical Board. Is it right for him go to away, to be thrown away when all of them profited? she said of the hospitals that hired him. In January 2012, he assisted on one of Duntschs surgeries. Christopher, known as Dr Death, was Jerry's friend and the surgeon who performed the botched operation on him in 2011 Credit: Dallas County Sheriff's office. He had been a neurosurgeon for 40 years and what he saw inside Efurds back shocked him. Following Summers surgery, Baylor Plano suspended Duntsch for 30 daysafter that, he was supposed to be supervised on every surgery he performed, according to Kirby. I had so much anger, because my life changed so much. Martins surgery was Duntschs last at Baylor. In January, one of his patients at University General Hospital Dallas woke up paralyzed from the waist down, according to the patients lawyer. Why Trust Us? When I think about it, its just devastating., When I spoke to him, a year after his wifes death, he told me that they had trusted Duntsch, and that there had been no sign suggesting they do otherwise. The board forbade Arafiles to supervise nurses or physician assistants anymore. Even now, Young told American Greed she still hears from Duntsch when he calls to talk to their sons. I was very independent and I had to become dependent on others for transportation, for my meals, for a lot of things.". Later, when Duntsch moved to Dallas to begin his career as a neurosurgeon he took Summers with him. He was smart. It isnt enough to prove that a doctor did something awful. Christopher Duntsch, 46, was initially charged with five counts of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury and one count of injuring an elderly person, 1 but the trial focused on the last charge, which alleged that Duntsch deliberately harmed Mary Efurd, then aged 72, in a 2012 operation that left her in a wheelchair. Kayla Keegan leads Good Housekeepings editorial growth strategies in the partnership, news, social, branded, membership and newsletter spaces. In November 2011 he was granted surgical privileges at Baylor Regional Medical Center of Plano. With the exception of pain management clinics and anesthesiologists, the board doesnt have the authority to inspect a doctor, or to start an investigation on its own. Another suffered a sliced vertebral artery which led to a stroke and later death. Young told D Magazine she was forced to move from her Dallas home after investigators started camping out on her street and attorneys started waiting in the stairwell of her apartment, looking for Duntsch. The board suspended his license but then immediately stayed the suspension and gave him probation. . I left with him and believed in him and then, you know, he just kind of fell apart.. In June 2010, following the media circus around the prosecution of the Kermit nurses, they filed a complaint against him. And Ill reflect back on how difficult those first months were afterwards. In 2017, Duntsch was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of maiming one of his patients.
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