More than a year had passed since Kellie Martins death and the complaint that started it all. We moved in together within three months, and then I became pregnant.. When he arrived in Dallas in late 2010, Duntsch's resume spoke of a skilled neurosurgeon: An M.D. A charismatic, charming monster but still a monster but he saw himself as the hero of his own story. Given the graphic subject matter, if you're squeamish, keep your finger on the "fast forward" button while watching Dr. Death. A version of this story ran in the September 2013 issue. 'Dr. Death' Surgeon Killed or Maimed 33 of His Patients - People 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. When the Medical Board suspended Duntschs license, the agencys spokespeople too seemed shocked. Even now, Young told American Greed she still hears from Duntsch when he calls to talk to their sons. In effect, plaintiffs have to prove a very tough case without access to the necessary hospital records. He seemed to have a hard time moving organs and blood vessels out of the way, according to Kirby. Competing on home soil, Zverev lost 7-6 (7/ . 2022 Calcutta Premier Division - Wikipedia The Legislature has also made suing hospitals difficult. That complaint was filedalong with the 6,000 to 8,000 other complaints the Medical Board receives each year, in addition to the thousands of licensure applications the agencys 156 employees must review. The temporary suspension was a power the Legislature gave the board in 2003. Duntsch was still living with Young, but he tried to carry out the dual romances by lying to each woman. The Texas Observer is known for its fiercely independent, uncompromising work which we are pleased to provide to the public at no charge in this space. But Public Citizen found that of those 793 doctors, the Texas Medical Board had taken serious action in less than half the cases. 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." "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. Scans later revealed bone fragments from Morguloffs vertebrae lodged in the nerves of his back, according to Lyons. How much risk can there be?. The Texas Medical Board finally suspended Duntsch's license on June 26, 2013, and permanently revoked it in December of that year. Peacock's Dr. Death is a chilling dramatization of the real-life story of former neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch.As those watching the show know, Christopher was dubbed "Dr. Death" in D Magazine . Jodi Smith. 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. She alsoalleged tothe magazine that he broke into her apartment, showing up one day covered in blood. They all received the same response Henderson had: Send us what you have, and well get back to you. The jury came back with their verdict in about an hour. Ellis Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville and will not be eligible for parole until he is 74 years old in 2045. Instead, she awoke in searing pain, which she likened to child birth, per D Magazine. And yet they occurred in Duntschs operating rooms over a period of just two years," an article in D Magazine reads. 2021 The Texas Observer. Their fellow physicians had found them committing such offenses as malpractice, sexual assault and drug use. And Ill reflect back on how difficult those first months were afterwards. The medical malpractice cap and the near-immunity for hospitals snapped two threads from the regulatory web. It would clearly be a policy decision for the Legislature to consider whether the process or the standards for evidence required for a temporary suspension need to change., Leigh Hopper, formerly the Medical Board spokesperson, put it more bluntly. His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher. Duntsch hired Morgan as his assistant while he was still with the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute in August of 2011. ), Photo: The first surgery went fine. He hired a marketing team and nurses. He alleged that Duntsch promised to pay him in stocks and out of his own salary but failed to follow through. Im just so grateful from the bottom of my heart, she said. Speaking to Inside Edition, they called him "a snake in the grass," "a monster," "drug addict" and even "a psychopath.". 2 Killer doctor Christopher Duntsch Credit: Social Media - Refer to Source Where is Christopher Duntsch AKA Dr. Death now? In this case, as well, the Texas Medical Board took no action, according to Public Citizen. Christopher Duntsch and Jerry Summers weren't only best friends - they took care of one another. 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. Death podcast, which inspired the Peacock series. The problem, she said, isnt staff. Summers remains paralyzed. You know in the beginning he talked about marriage. Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal. Don was a lieutenant with the Garland Police Department, and had spent enough time in hospitals to know this delay wasnt a good sign. 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. Duntschs explanation, along with the email from Baylor, was enough to get him a trial run of five surgeries at Dallas Medical Center. One patient had a stroke following a chelation therapy. Martins surgery was Duntschs last at Baylor. On the right side, there was a screw through a portion of the S1 nerve root.. Anatomy of a Tragedy - The Texas Observer Soon after Summers woke up paralyzed, a woman named Kellie Martin came to see Duntsch at Texas Neurosurgical Institute. Kellie Martin was in good health; a laminectomy is considered a minor procedure. In 2003, the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature capped pain-and-suffering damages in medical malpractice lawsuits at $250,000. The. "Rather than protecting the public from harm, Baylor allowed him [Duntsch] to be passed on from hospital to hospital," Van Wey told the Dallas News. His performance, Kirby wrote, was pathetic . 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"). It was a minimally invasive surgery, Kirby said, that killed Kellie Martin. Wendy Young believed she had finally met her Prince Charming after crossing paths with Christopher Duntsch. For a temporary suspension, the standard is even higher than the boards other enforcement actions. Dr. Kirby, on his end, called him a sociopath. In February of 2017, Christopher was sentenced to life in prison. Christopher Duntsch: The Remorseless Killer Surgeon Called 'Dr. Death' Hewould go on to have another child with Youngwho finally split from the struggling doctor by 2014. He said his son called him upset after several of the botched surgeries. So while hospital administrators did a deeper background examination, they granted Duntsch temporary privileges. In 2017, Duntsch was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of maiming one of his patients. The surgery had gone so badly, Kirby later wrote to the Medical Board, that the rest of the OR team had to physically restrain Duntsch from continuing. "He has a job inside the prison. While Christopher caused harm to many, it wasn't until a patient Mary Efurd that he was charged with a crime. Dr. Death: Disgraced surgeon at center of podcast, show has CSU roots If the board decides to act on a complaintand only one in four complaints makes it that farinvestigators begin subpoenaing hospital records, which the board will eventually send to a pair of volunteer doctors in the same specialty who will review the case (if they disagree, a third doctor has to be found to break the tie). Why Did Dr. Death Do It? 'Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story' Explains Duntsch, who is now 50, is serving time in a Texas prison. According to The Dallas Morning News, he will be up for parole in 2045, when he is 74. He wrote grants and secured more than $3 million in funding. Brown was later found unresponsive in her hospital room and staff couldnt contact Duntsch for 90 minutes, according to those records. Kayla Keegan leads Good Housekeepings editorial growth strategies in the partnership, news, social, branded, membership and newsletter spaces. The protections make some sense. He nicked the patients vertebral artery, causing the space he was working in to fill with blood. Into this milieu rolled Christopher Duntsch, M.D., like a 100-year storm. This has freed hospitals from the fear of litigation, but its also removed the financial motivation for policing their own physicians. It was supposed to be such a simple procedure. Another doctor compared Duntsch to Hannibal Lecter three times in eight minutes. It is unclear what she has been up to since Duntsch's life imprisonment sentence. For the last three days, jurors listened to testimony in the . 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. 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. And the words that his patients and their families desperately wanted to hear. "The nerve root had been severed. After his wife died, Don Martin found himself at a loss. But when I talked to Medical Board spokesperson Megan Goode about this, she said Public Citizen had it wrongthat the board isnt underfunded at all. "He works out, he reads, he studies the Biblehell call and say goodnight to his boys. Yet Arafiles didnt surrender his license until November 2011, after he had been convicted of a felony. But the school told Henderson that Duntsch had completed the residency program. (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.). CHRISTOPHER Duntsch, is infamously known as Dr Death for gross malpractice. When physical therapy didnt relieve the pain, her family doctor suggested she see a certain neurosurgeonbut the doctor couldnt find that surgeons card, so she suggested Duntsch instead. Duntschwho was just completing a prestigious spine surgery fellowship in Tennesseebought Young an appletini and the two immediately clicked. Per Bustle, Christopher is currently incarcerated at O.B. He was arrested in 2014 for jumping over the fence atthe home of Youngs sisterin Garland and trying to take their son, Aiden. Every year the board is both overseeing many more doctors and bringing in more money. Actually, hit the mute button, toothe sounds of botched surgeries are gruesome, made more horrifying knowing they're taken from real life. 2023 . He had been a neurosurgeon for 40 years and what he saw inside Efurds back shocked him. Jurors convicted Duntsch Tuesday of injury to an elderly person in the botched July 2012 surgery that put Mary Efurd in a wheelchair. 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. The Untold Truth Of Dr. Death - Grunge Dr. Death is a new true-crime series on Peacock about the story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch. Death.. During surgery, Duntsch had sliced through one of the arteries alongside Martins spine, as he had with Summers. He felt confident. Christopher Daniel Duntsch (born April 3, 1971) [1] is a former American neurosurgeon who has been nicknamed Dr. D. and Dr. Death [2] for gross malpractice resulting in the maiming of several patients' spines and two deaths while working at hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Christopher Duntsch's case was the subject of Wondery's podcast, "Dr. Death," which was released in 2018. In 2008 one of his patients died of a prescription drug overdose after he had prescribed her a lethal dose of the painkiller Tramadol. Duntsch, 44, is the first surgeon known to be sentenced to prison for a botched surgery. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more. He was a genius, Ellison said,adding that Morgan initially felt she had found the one.. Death Based On A True Story, Joshua Jackson On Role Of Surgeon, Christopher Duntsch, In Peacocks Dr. 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. Finally the family fired him. On the tape, Henderson demands to know why Duntsch is still practicing. Baylor brought in a senior surgeon to fix the damage to Summers spine. After his license was suspended, Duntsch disappeared. It was supposed to be a simple procedure, which is, perhaps, why Baylor didnt put anyone in the operating room to supervise Duntsch. We rely on the generosity of our readers who believe that this work is important. By the time she was transferred to UT Southwestern Medical Center later that day, she was brain dead. Across two years, Duntsch . Two weeks later, on June 14, 2013, Kirby got a call to come to University General to do a recovery surgery on one of Duntschs patients. He became a quadriplegic, and in February 2021, died from an infection connected to that very surgery one decade prior, per Local 24 News. Of the three in the academy, viz. Victim statements reveal more gruesome details of botched surgeries - WFAA Birthday boy Zverev knocked out in Munich - mid-day.com 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. Multiple people dead, dozens injured after dust storm causes massive pileup on I-55 in Illinois, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. He listed the cause of death as therapeutic misadventure, according to his report. 'Dr. Death': Texas Neurosurgeon Sentenced to Life in Prison - People 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. As D Magazine put it, "His outcomes were so poor, so beyond the accepted standard of care, that a grand jury indicted him on five counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon as well as a single count of harming an elderly patient." Shes also worked as a social editor for House Beautiful and had previous writing stints at Redbook,CosmopolitanandSeventeen. Who Is Kimberly Morgan, 'Dr. Death' Christopher Duntsch's Assistant 'Dr. Death' clings to the wrong part of a true story - Mic Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. For two days the patient, Jeffrey Glidewell, lay unattended in the ICU while Duntsch made excuses to the family. This guy already killed somebody, made another a quad, made a partial paraplegic out of my patient. I said, He needs to be stopped. She would be present during the spinal . Doctors rights are to be protected at every step of the process. But the board is limited in its ability to investigate malpractice. Before going to medical school, Duntsch wanted to be a pro-football player. Plano's Baylor hospital faces hard questions after claims against A CT scan found that the metal spinal fusion hardware, meant to be placed on the patients spine to keep the vertebrae from moving, was sunk into the muscles of her lower back, inches from her spine. Wendy Young Photo: Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal 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. "I think its going to be like a floodgate thats going to really open, crying. These doctors are anomalies too. Prince Charming, Im gonna change your life, Wendy Young said of the promising start to her romance with Christopher Duntsch. In 2007, he was found to be leaving presigned prescription pads with his nurse so she could prescribe controlled substances while he was away, according to Public Citizen. Jurors heard from Duntschs father, mother, brother and a family friend who sought to appeal to the sympathies of the jury. While that complaint worked its way through the system, another of his patients died of a hydrocodone overdose. Christopher Duntsch shattered that trust over the course of a few years, ruining countless lives. Victim of Real-Life 'Dr. Death' Believes There Are Others Like Him Out Peacock's 'Dr. Death': What TV show changed from podcast - Los Angeles His dad is a physical therapist. Because he owed people a lot of money. "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. He was a megalomaniac. Duntsch was convicted and sentenced to life behind bars. 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. 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.. He was found guilty of his crimes in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison. And then there was the 2011 case of Dr. Rolando Arafiles, the West Texas doctor who sicced the county sheriff on two nurses who dared report him to the Texas Medical Board (see Intent to Harm, March 2011). 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.. But as investigators took a look back at Christopher's history and consulted with those who knew him, what they discovered was quite disturbing. He was horrified to realize that Duntsch was going to keep practicing. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Its not clear how such a well-trained surgeon could have performed so disastrously, but the June 26 Medical Board report offers a hint: Respondent is unable to practice medicine with reasonable skill and safety due to impairment from drugs or alcohol.. His daughter, Caitlin Martin-Linduff, was relieved and tearful to know Duntsch will never hurt anyone again. 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. Because he had no conscience. Deathand the intense media scrutiny surrounding the shocking case would drive Young out of Dallas with the couples two sons. Hes been devastated, Don Duntsch said. This is an almost impossible standard to meet, and it has left hospitals immune to the actions of whatever doctors they bring on. When she responds, shes quiet. Friends since they played football together in high school, Summers helped Duntsch stay organized while he worked in the lab during his residency. Hes lost everything.. One woman came in for a routine operation on a herniated disc, and bled to death on the recovery table.
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