A man who underwent a medical emergency while on holiday in Florida died on the operating table after surgeons mistakenly removed his liver instead of his spleen, the patient’s family said.
William Bryan, from Alabama, was visiting South Florida last month when he suddenly felt pain in his lower left abdomen, leading him and his wife, Beverly, to Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital between Pensacola and Panama City.
Doctors were concerned about a problem with his spleen and hospitalised him for further tests, the family’s lawyer said.
The Zarzaul Law Firm said in a Facebook post on Friday that general surgeon Dr. Thomas Shakhnovsky and chief medical officer Dr. Christopher Bacani had persuaded 70-year-old Brian to undergo emergency surgery at the hospital, but that not doing so would have put him at risk of “serious complications if he left the hospital.”
Brian underwent a manual laparoscopic splenectomy on August 21st.
The law firm alleges that midway through the operation, Shakhnovsky removed Bryan’s liver instead of his spleen.
The law firm argued that the botched surgery “led to immediate, catastrophic bleeding, resulting in death.”
The law firm claims that a general surgeon mistakenly removed Brian’s liver and then classified the organ as a “spleen” – it was only discovered to be a liver after Brian’s death.
Shakhnovsky allegedly told Beverly Bryan that her husband’s “spleen” was so severely diseased that it had grown four times its normal size and moved to the other side of his body, the office alleges.
In a typical human body, the liver is located in the upper right part of the abdominal cavity, just below the diaphragm, above the stomach, right kidney, and intestines.
The spleen is located in the upper left part of the abdomen, next to the stomach, and is much smaller than the liver, weighing 2.4 to 3 pounds less and about the size of a fist.
Zarzaul-Law alleged that Shakhnovsky had also been accused of making a “mis-site operation” last year, removing part of a patient’s pancreas instead of performing an adrenaline removal as originally planned.
The lawsuit has been settled, and terms were not disclosed, the law firm argued.
Beverly Bryan said she hired the law firm to get “justice” for her husband and hopes the general surgeon will no longer treat other patients.
“My husband died helplessly on Dr. Shakhnovsky’s operating table. The hospital should have known that my husband had previously made serious, life-changing surgical errors, and I don’t want anyone else to die because of their incompetence,” his wife said in a statement through her law firm.
Bryan said she is seeking both a lawsuit and a criminal investigation into her husband’s death.
Zarzaul said North Walton Doctors Hospital had “severed ties” with Shakhnovsky and removed all photos and references to him from its website.
Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital said in a statement that it was investigating William Bryan’s death but was not releasing further details due to confidentiality reasons.
“We take allegations like this very seriously, and our leadership team is conducting a thorough investigation into this incident. Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital has a long history of providing safe, quality care since opening in 2003,” the hospital said in a statement obtained by AL.com.
“Patient safety remains our number one priority, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the family. We utmost respect the privacy of our patients and do not comment on specific patient cases or ongoing litigation.”
After Brian’s death, the coroner found a small cyst on his spleen, which is believed to be the cause of the pain that initially landed him in hospital.