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.. Get our latest in-depth reporting straight to your inbox. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. In February 2021, Summers died of an infection directly related to the surgery. Given the graphic subject matter, if you're squeamish, keep your finger on the "fast forward" button while watching Dr. Death. His dad is a physical therapist. Within a month of hiring Kimberly Morgan, who was a nurse practitioner, to help him run his new practice, the pair were sleeping together, according to the podcast. Outlets must also tag the Observer in all social media posts. But as in many other areas in Texasbenzene pollution from hydraulic fracturing sites; ammonium nitrate pileups at fertilizer plantsMartins death and Summers paralysis fell into a regulatory no mans land. You know, hell call and say goodnight to his boys, um, sometimes hell have bedtime stories and try to be as normal as possible.. We rely on the generosity of our readers who believe that this work is important. 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.". Hes lost everything.. 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. Summers remains paralyzed. Melinda Lehmann, his defense attorney, said Duntsch was a scapegoat for a medical establishment that just kept hiring him and putting him in operating rooms. Speaking to Inside Edition, they called him "a snake in the grass," "a monster," "drug addict" and even "a psychopath.". In 2017, Duntsch was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of maiming one of his patients. Site made in collaboration with CMYK. Though a hospital peer review took this doctors privileges in 2006, he continued to practice for three more years until he retired, according to federal records. AnnaSophia Robb Stars In New Series Dr. In 2018, she was living in Springtown with her new boyfriends parents and had just given birth to a third child she shares with her newpartner. On the right side, there was a screw through a portion of the S1 nerve root.. Christopher Duntsch, the focus of .css-9cezh6{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#E61957;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-9cezh6:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Peacock's true crime series Dr. Death, looked good on paper. Culture TV Peacock True Crime. Neither hospital would talk about Duntsch for this story. He had been a neurosurgeon for 40 years and what he saw inside Efurds back shocked him. For weeks, jurors heard the accounts of patients who had been maimed or paralyzed in bungled surgeries. Prince Charming, Im gonna change your life, Wendy Young said of the promising start to her romance with Christopher Duntsch. "After building a flourishing neurosurgery practice, everything suddenly changes when patients entering Dr. Duntsch's operating room for complex but routine spinal surgeries start leaving permanently disabled or dead. It was supposed to be such a simple procedure. So why didnt he stop? Shughart said. He wrote grants and secured more than $3 million in funding. Then he waited for several more hours until the nurses came out to tell him and his daughters that Kellie Martin was dead. Duntsch appealed his sentence and lost the appeal in 2018. Wendy Young, portrayed by Molly Griggs in Dr. Death, was the name of Duntsch's real girlfriend. A Medical Board investigation later found that Arafiles assistant was inappropriately prescribing stimulants and diuretics to patients. Some drag on for years. This is a once-in-a-generation occurrence, that we have someone off the rails this badthis is why no one saw this coming., Most of the doctors on the Medical Board, he pointed out, arent surgeons. Physicians who complained about Duntsch to the Texas Medical Board and to the hospitals he worked at described his practice in superlative terms. His mom was a teacher. [3] But it wouldnt be the end of the trouble between the pair. Was it that he was unqualified and completely unaware of regional anatomy? In the time between the first complaint to the board, and when Duntsch was finally stopped on June 26, five of his patients were seriously injured and one died. In February 2013, for unclear reasons, the board took his license. Ellis Unit outside of Huntsville, Texas. I couldnt believe a trained surgeon could do this, Henderson told me. and a Ph.D. from a top-tier medical school, a decade of experience, and a central role in a pioneering stem-cell treatment. .css-1me6ynq{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#125C68;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#125C68;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-1me6ynq:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:#595959;}Peacock's Dr. Death is a chilling dramatization of the real-life story of former neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch. Duntsch, an engaging and fast-talking son of missionaries, came to North Texas with uncommon credentials. Its more or less satisfied with the way that things work.. It was widely acknowledged that Christopher was a confident person, and D Magazine reported that many liked him immediately when they met him (though his fellow neurosurgeons reportedly found him to be "fast-talking and cocksure"). Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal. For example, when Duntsch left Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, the hospital provided a letter confirming there had been no "summary or administrative restrictions or suspensions," despite the fact that Duntsch had been suspended for 30 days following Summers's surgery. Before we ask if the board does its job, we have to ask what is the job the Legislature assigned to the board, and what resources the board gets to do that job. And the words that his patients and their families desperately wanted to hear. In the two years he practiced as a spine surgeon across four Dallas institutions, Duntsch operated on 37 people. By the time she was transferred to UT Southwestern Medical Center later that day, she was brain dead. Dr. Robert Henderson, a Dallas-based orthopedic surgeon who worked to alert authorities about Duntsch, had his own take. In a specialized field like neurosurgery, that means further months of delay. At every step of the way, you would have to know the right thing to do so you could do the wrong thing, because he did all the wrong things.. When Kirby saw Glidewell, he later wrote the Medical Board, he was horrified. The incision, he wrote, was cut into Glidewells throat two or three inches lower and an inch midline from where it should have been oriented saliva and pus were coming out of the wound.. They all have blood on their hands.. In 2012, when Efurd was 74, she saw Duntsch for what should have been a relatively simple surgery to fuse two of her vertebrae. This is what I wanted, she said. Ellisontold thepodcast that Morgan was instantly smitten with the doctor. 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. Until the day of the suspension, if you had looked Duntsch up on the Texas Medical Board website, you would have found him a physician in good standing. In July of that year, Duntsch was indicted by a Dallas County grand jury on five counts of aggravated assault and one count of harming an elderly person. At trial, prosecutors opted only to pursue the harming an elderly person charge connected to his failed surgery on MaryEfurd; however, other victims would also testify at trial. Duntsch's trial took place in 2017. I was very independent and I had to become dependent on others for transportation, for my meals, for a lot of things.". They shouldnt ever happen in someones entire career. The surgery, he said, beaming into the camera, was a resounding success. Of the three in the academy, viz. He was horrified to realize that Duntsch was going to keep practicing. The four-part docuseries features old footage and new interviews to tell more of the story about the neurosurgeon who was sentenced to prison after maiming or killing more than 30 patients. 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. Across two years, Duntsch . The series is based on reporting from the podcast Dr. Death, from the same production studio that created Dirty John. She was 55 and had been experiencing persistent back pain after a fall at home. And the only thing she complained about was she couldnt find what she wanted to watch on TV.. Because of greed. Senior Editor, Editorial Business Development, Where Is Dr. Death Now? He was convicted of injury to an elderly person in the 2012 surgery on Mary Efurd that put her in a wheelchair. He was very eloquent in stating the causes and the need for the procedure. The. Death podcast, which inspired the Peacock series. I dont know what it is, she said. But the school told Henderson that Duntsch had completed the residency program. Meanwhile, he was continuing to get patients, continuing to operate. Instead, she awoke in searing pain, which she likened to child birth, per D Magazine. He had no idea what he was doing. He felt, Kirby wrote to the Texas Medical Board a year later, that most of the spine surgery being done in Dallas was malpractice, and he was going to have to clean things up.. So the board members tend to act conservatively. He said his son called him upset after several of the botched surgeries. First, the Medical Board staff has to screen every complaint and has 45 days to decide whether the agency will act on it. I think what happened is that as things began to fall apart, the only thing he knew was to try harder, Don Duntsch said. The once notable neurosurgeon is now 50 years old. My record is excellent," he told The Dallas Morning News in 2015. His performance, Kirby wrote, was pathetic . The operation was a spinal fusion in which two vertebrae are joined; surgeons use a metal plate to help hold the vertebrae together. Competing on home soil, Zverev lost 7-6 (7/ . She said she thought he was going to make millions. But what is the real-life story behind Duntsch and Youngs complicated romance? He explained the disturbing visit by saying he had been attacked by an investigator for an attorney hired by one of his patients, although that account was never verified. Kimberly Morgan is the former assistant and ex-girlfriend of Christopher Duntsch, nicknamed Dr Death. As for what Baylor told Dallas Medical Center, a Baylor spokesperson said in a statement to the Observer that, It has been the longstanding policy of Baylor to respond with comprehensive information when it receives a proper inquiry from another hospital. The one-time neurosurgeon was sentenced by the 12-member jury to spend the remainder of his life behind bars Monday afternoon. He was brilliant. Out July 15, Dr. Death introduces viewers to Christopher Duntsch, a real-life Texas-based surgeon who in 2017 was sentenced to life in prison after maiming and even killing almost all of the. 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. He just had no recognition of the proper anatomy. Why Trust Us? He alleged that Duntsch promised to pay him in stocks and out of his own salary but failed to follow through. At first, Henderson thought Duntsch might be an impostor. It was horrible. For two days the patient, Jeffrey Glidewell, lay unattended in the ICU while Duntsch made excuses to the family. 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. He was a megalomaniac. August 28, 2013, 2:01 . According to Kirby, the hospital owner told him that Duntsch had privileges to do only minimally invasive surgeries. But the result is that unless a doctor is caught dealing drugs or sexually assaulting patientsor is convicted of a felonyit is difficult to get his or her license revoked. "We were told Duntsch was one of the best and smartest neurosurgeons they ever trained, as they went on at length about his strengths," representatives from Baylor Regional Medical Center told Pro Publica in an email. And because the story of what he's accused of doing to 33 patients he operated on while . Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Duntsch briefly enrolled at CSU in the fall of 1991 when he was 20 years old. Martins surgery was Duntschs last at Baylor. My whole world crashed, he said. Hes been devastated, Don Duntsch said. Only their consciences, and those of their fellow doctors, limit them. Even the fact that the board is conducting an investigation remains confidential until the investigation is over. "The nerve root had been severed. But more than anything, we don't get to know Christopher Duntsch. A man who was a victim of other people's bad work and bad behavior," he told Newsweek. Ill do some crying. More than a year had passed since Kellie Martins death and the complaint that started it all. Duntsch was a highlysought-after neurosurgeon who promised her a life filled with extravagance and success. And while the Medical Board investigated, the pattern continued. He will not be eligible for parole until 2045, when he will be 74-years-old. Over the course of 2012 and 2013, even as the Texas Medical Board and the hospitals he worked with received repeated complaints from a half-dozen doctors and lawyers begging them to take action, Duntsch continued to practice medicine. Later in June 2013 Kirby sent a sworn statement to the Medical Board in which he laid out all of Duntschs patients he knew about and included reports from many of the surgeons who had worked on them. 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. The eight-episode series is anticipated to be a thrilling watch. Duntschs explanation, along with the email from Baylor, was enough to get him a trial run of five surgeries at Dallas Medical Center. Death,which tells a dramatized version of the doctors brief, but deadly, medical career in Texas, including thestruggles he faced in his complicated romantic life as he tried to juggle multiplerelationships. His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher. Young is portrayed in the dramatized series by actress Molly Griggs, who brings to life the couples volatile arguments, including onedepiction in whichYoung announcesshe is pregnant just months into their relationship to a less-than-thrilled Duntsch, played by former Dawsons Creek star Joshua Jackson. In 2015, Duntsch was charged with five counts of aggravated assault for allegedly mishandling spinal surgeries, and one count of injuring an elderly person, according to the Dallas Morning News. If I am being honest, the best thing you could probably do is abort that fking baby because you are not the type of person who can raise it, Jacksons character screams at his pregnant girlfriend before tearing out of the couples Dallas home. But as investigators took a look back at Christopher's history and consulted with those who knew him, what they discovered was quite disturbing. We have to consider the uncomfortable possibility that Christopher Duntsch is to the medical system what the recent West explosion was to the fertilizer industrya regrettable tragedy, but the price of living in a free-market system. Because he owed people a lot of money. 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.. 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. In an email he wrote to former assistant Kimberly Morgan in 2011, Duntsch seemed to be grappling with bloodlust: "You, my child, are the only one between me and the other side. The "deadly weapons" were his hands and surgical tools. Its left to hospitals to police their doctors. Jurors also heard from doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who testified theywere shocked by what they saw Duntsch do during and after those surgeries. Duntsch, 40, met Wendy, 27, at a bar where she was working as a stripper. This was a very rare phenomenonmost of the doctors who reported Duntsch had never filed a report before. In November 2011 he was granted surgical privileges at Baylor Regional Medical Center of Plano. Martin selected Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon with a glowing reputation, to perform the surgery at Baylor Plano Hospital. "One surgeon described these as 'never events.' According to his ex-girlfriend Wendy Young (played by Mollie Griggs in the show), Duntsch is in touch with his two sons. Kirby called the owner of University General. It was a minimally invasive surgery, Kirby said, that killed Kellie Martin. Dallas Magazine states that Duntsch became key in supplying samples to scientists for research. She would be present during the spinal . 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. She alsoalleged tothe magazine that he broke into her apartment, showing up one day covered in blood. Kellie Martin was in good health; a laminectomy is considered a minor procedure. Kirby said Duntsch had problems at nearly every step of the operation. The two-week trial especially focused on Mary Efurd's testimony. He told Young that Morgan was his assistant and there was nothing romantic going on between the pair. How much risk can there be?. When he arrived in Dallas in late 2010, Duntsch's resume spoke of a skilled neurosurgeon: An M.D. Scans later revealed bone fragments from Morguloffs vertebrae lodged in the nerves of his back, according to Lyons. Upon his return, Duntsch performed surgery on a patient named Kellie Martinand she bled to death. 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. Duntsch, it turned out, had, as with other patients, cut into Glidewells vertebral artery; an MRI found that he had also left a sponge festering in the soft tissue of Glidewells throat. "I think all of us will be thinking about things like this, and hopefully there will be some tighter controls, more accountability in a lot of areas so something like this wont happen again. He talked impressive. A Texas neurosurgeon accused of intentionally botching multiple spinal surgeries, resulting in the death of two . "Dr. Death" and the companion docuseries "Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story" are both available to stream on Peacock now. Duntsch was arrested in July 2015. Young told D Magazine the incident had simply been a misunderstanding after she had given birth to the couples second son and had asked Duntsch to bring Aiden to the hospital to meet his new brother. This is an almost impossible standard to meet, and it has left hospitals immune to the actions of whatever doctors they bring on. I had so much anger, because my life changed so much. We felt confident too.. But Young would never get the happy ending she had envisioned with the doctor. All rights reserved. And all the while, until their cases are resolved, doctorseven those accused of the most heinous malpracticecan continue to practice. Another doctor compared Duntsch to Hannibal Lecter three times in eight minutes. After the Brown and Efurd debacles in July 2012, the CEO of Dallas Medical Center, Dr. Corazon Hernandez, fired Duntsch and reported him to the Medical Board, according to Henderson. Dr. Duntsch's surviving surgery patients suffered a range of debilitating conditions, which ProPublica details: Permanent nerve damage, paralysis, loss of vocal cords. He wanted to live the high life and a neurosurgeon makes big bucks. Jurors convicted Duntsch Tuesday of injury to an elderly person in the botched July 2012 surgery that put Mary Efurd in a wheelchair. The board cant revoke a license without overwhelming evidence, and investigations can take months, with months or years of costly hearings dragging on afterward. Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more! Later, when Duntsch moved to Dallas to begin his career as a neurosurgeon he took Summers with him. Doctors brought in to clean up his surgeries decried his surgical misadventures, according to hospital records. If you were a patient in the Dallas area around this time looking for a spine surgeon, there would have been nothing to suggest that Duntsch was a risky choice. Many of them had committed serious practice violations. 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. Per Bustle, Christopher is currently incarcerated at O.B. "He works out, he reads, he studies the Biblehell call and say goodnight to his boys. At the time, Duntsch had been fielding offers in Dallas, SanDiegoand New York from medical centers eager to have a neurosurgeon with hisseeminglyimpressive resume on staff. 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. They talked about how he doted on his two little boys. A version of this story ran in the September 2013 issue. And Ill reflect back on how difficult those first months were afterwards. This guy already killed somebody, made another a quad, made a partial paraplegic out of my patient. I said, He needs to be stopped. Of that set, two died and 31 were paralyzed or seriously injured. He had a doctorate in molecular biology as well as a medical degree from the University. In this case, as well, the Texas Medical Board took no action, according to Public Citizen. Yet Arafiles didnt surrender his license until November 2011, after he had been convicted of a felony. But Baylor didnt hold him to that.
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