He spotted a hole in Duntsch’s scrubs. Revelers drank and used cocaine and pills, she said. Then he discovered that one of Efurd’s nerve roots — the bundle of nerves coming out of the spine — was completely gone. “It was as if he knew everything to do,” Henderson said of Duntsch, “and then he’d done virtually everything wrong.”There were three holes poked into Efurd’s spinal column where Duntsch had tried and failed to insert screws.
I want to die.’”One morning, Summers began screaming and told several nurses that he and Duntsch had stayed up the night before the surgery doing eight-balls of cocaine. The pain is continuous.”Soon after the Morguloff surgery, Duntsch took on a patient who was also an old friend.Jerry Summers had played football with Duntsch in high school and helped with logistics at the research lab during his residency. In court, her family said they withdrew life support a few days later. A nerve root was also damaged.Because of Efurd's age, the injury to an elderly person charge he faced was a first-degree felony with a punishment of life in prison.In March 2012, Duntsch operated on 54-year-old Kellie Martin.
Such boards often move slowly, but if hospital officials submit material they’ve gathered to justify letting a doctor go, boards can act to protect patients from imminent harm.“Had Baylor’s action been reported appropriately, I would anticipate the board would have met within days to have an immediate suspension,” said Dr. Allan Shulkin, a Dallas pulmonologist who was on the medical board in 2012.The board would still have conducted an investigation, but Duntsch would not have been allowed to operate while it was going on, Shulkin said. Jerry left Dr Death's operating theatre as a quadriplegic Credit: Local Memphis.
“I mean, that indicates that he might get it back at some point in time, and I was already aware of the fact of how glib Dr. Duntsch was, and how disarming he was, and how friendly and intelligent he appeared whenever he introduced himself to people that he wanted to impress.
When Kirby learned the details, he asked the doctor who referred the case to him about the surgeon: “Is it a guy named Christopher Duntsch?”Duntsch had managed to get a job at Legacy Surgery Center, an outpatient clinic. As at the University of Tennessee, he stalled at first, telling administrators he got lost on the way to the lab.
He requires 24-hour caregivers and sat, tipped back, in his power wheelchair, as I talked to him about Duntsch.Summers seemed resigned to his injuries, to his friend’s role in them and to the systemic weaknesses that allow problem doctors to keep practicing. He filed a complaint that called Dunstch a sociopath who, if not stopped, would "continue to maim and kill innocent patients. But hours later, Duntsch came out and told Glidewell’s wife that he had found a tumor in Glidewell’s neck and aborted the procedure.“I was devastated, crying,” Robin Glidewell recalled. Instead, he resigned, leaving on April 20, 2012, with a Since Duntsch’s departure was technically voluntary and his leave had been for less than 31 days, Baylor-Plano was under no obligation to report him to the The databank, which was established in 1990, tracks malpractice payouts and adverse actions taken against doctors, such as being fired, barred from Medicare, handed a long suspension, or having a license suspended or revoked.The information isn’t available to the public or other doctors, but hospital administrators have access to the databank and are supposed to use it to make sure problem doctors can’t shed their pasts by moving from state to state or hospital to hospital.
"And the doctors who referred him didn’t know. Kill me. "It feels like there's an ice pick planted squarely in my back," he says. Kirby said he argued with Duntsch, even offering to take over, but Duntsch insisted he knew what he was doing.
“Come on.