christopher duntsch brothers
He sounded impressive, Don said. This will not bring my mother back, but it is some sense of justice for the all the families, for all of the victims.. 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. You're probably asking, How could Duntsch have gotten away with a string of botched surgeries? 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.. Written by Patrick Macmanus, the show will only be available exclusively on Peacock. 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. Death Series, Dr. Christopher Duntsch and Jerry Summers weren't only best friends - they took care of one another. Sometimes we know that someones bad, but when it comes to taking them to a hearing and proving it to where we can actually do some disciplinary action, it takes time of gathering evidence. He had no idea what he was doing. When he moved to Dallas in late 2010, Duntsch was 41 years old, fresh out of a residency program at the University of Tennessee Health Science Centers Department of Neurosurgery in Memphis. The "deadly weapons" were his hands and surgical tools. Hospitals can get all of the benefit of an expensive surgeon practicing in their facility and little of the exposure. Those are the words that Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a Dallas neurosurgeon, wrote to his girlfriend in 2011 in the midst of a two-year period that left 33 of his 38 patients maimed, wounded or . One patient had a stroke following a chelation therapy. Finally the family fired him. 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. He blamed Summers paralysis on Duntschs surgical misadventures, which had led to the artery being cut; the final straw, he wrote in his report, had been the packing of coagulants around the cut, which had seriously damaged Summers spinal cord. Multiple people dead, dozens injured after dust storm causes massive pileup on I-55 in Illinois, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. 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. And the words that his patients and their families desperately wanted to hear. Across two years, Duntsch . The only entity that could stop Duntsch from seeing more patients was the Texas Medical Board. After growing up in Tennessee,. During surgery, Duntsch had sliced through one of the arteries alongside Martins spine, as he had with Summers. Was it that he was unqualified and completely unaware of regional anatomy? But the real tragedy of the Christopher Duntsch story is how preventable it was. You know in the beginning he talked about marriage. The nuance of his private life is obscured by allusions to a failed football career and a demeaning father that somehow are. Further, both works question Duntsch's perspective. Death podcast, which inspired the Peacock series. Two days later, once Efurd was stable, Henderson was assigned to do the repair surgery. Before moving to West Texas, Arafiles had run a small alternative clinic in Victoria, peddling chelation therapy, a fringe cure that is supposed to rid the body of heavy metals. By the time the Texas Medical Board revoked his license in June 2013, Duntsch had left two patients dead and four paralyzed in a series of botched surgeries. Dr. Christopher Duntsch's patients ended up maimed and dead, but the real tragedy is that the Texas Medical Board couldn't stop him. The former doctor even boasted a neurosurgical residency at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine at Memphis, earned millions in funding for research projects, obtained a research patent under his name and published academic papers, per Oxygen. Competing on home soil, Zverev lost 7-6 (7/ . But its more complicated than that. He said he had no doubt that his son cared about his patients. 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. In the second, while doing a cervical fusion on a woman named Floella Brown, Duntsch removed a bone from an area that was not required by any clinical or anatomical standards, resulting in injury to the vertebral artery, according to Texas Medical Board records. Its a completely egregious case, Leigh Hopper, then head of communications for the Texas Medical Board, told The Dallas Morning News in June. Dubbed "Dr. Death," the case gained national attention, revealing how easy. The process for resolving complaints is slow and painstaking, set up in statute to guarantee doctors the maximum legal protection. Their romance moved. Brown had suffered excessive blood loss and a stroke, according to the agency. 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.. [3] He will not be eligible for parole until 2045, when he will be 74-years-old. His father says Christopher Duntsch is a humbled man. 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. Even now, Young told American Greed she still hears from Duntsch when he calls to talk to their sons. After a few calls to various Dallas-area medical societies, someone suggested he call the Medical Board. Texas number of license applications has grown every year since 2003, when medical malpractice damage caps passed. Once Duntsch proved himself inept, hospitals let him resign instead of going through the legal process of firing him. Im just so grateful from the bottom of my heart, she said. And a system in which theres no way to know for sure if your doctor is dangerous. The former neurosurgeon is currently serving a life sentence for the maiming of Mary Efurd, one of the . He had amputated a nerve root, Henderson said. So I called them up, and they said, Will you fill out a complaint, and well probably read the complaint in about 30 days, and well start an investigation after that., I said, You dont seem to understand. Christopher Duntsch, who once claimed to be a mixture of "God, Einstein and the Antichrist," injured or killed 33 of his 38 patients in less than two years, according to prosecutors. What remained was the Texas Medical Board. 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. My record is excellent," he told The Dallas Morning News in 2015. (Like other state licensing agenciesthe Pharmacy Board, the Nurse Practitioner Boardthe Medical Board operates at a surplus for the state.). .css-lwn4i5{display:block;font-family:Neutra,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-weight:bold;letter-spacing:-0.01rem;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:center;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-lwn4i5:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-lwn4i5{font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-lwn4i5{font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 48rem){.css-lwn4i5{font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-lwn4i5{font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.1;}}Leann Rimes Shares Video Montage for Anniversary, Read Erin Napier's Post about 'Home Town', Christie Brinkley = Iconic In Bareback Riding Pic, 35 Celebrity Relationships That Upset Fans, Celebrities You Didn't Know Had Famous Moms, 30 Celebrity Feuds That Were Never Resolved, Celebrity Couples from 50 Years You Forgot About, We Ranked Every Single Adam Sandler Movie, 34 'Bridgerton' Fun Facts to Fuel Your Obsession, Where Youve Seen the Cast of Bridgerton Before. Christopher Duntsch's case was the subject of Wondery's podcast, "Dr. Death," which was released in 2018. The once notable neurosurgeon is now 50 years old. Because he owed people a lot of money. 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. 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. We rely on the generosity of our readers who believe that this work is important. Duntsch was a highlysought-after neurosurgeon who promised her a life filled with extravagance and success. The patients mother complained to the Medical Board. In telling the story of Duntsch, both the series and podcast reveal how a flawed system allowed him to operate for so long. 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. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. The board suspended his license but then immediately stayed the suspension and gave him probation. We now know that the Texas Medical Board was working behind the scenes in summer 2012, trying to find grounds to temporarily suspend Duntschs license. The answer, in both cases, seems to be very little. I couldnt believe a trained surgeon could do this, Henderson told me. 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. But a few years later, he popped up in Kermit doing just thatas well as selling drugs out of the operating room and performing bizarre surgeries he hadnt been trained for. For the last three days, jurors listened to testimony in the . First, the Medical Board staff has to screen every complaint and has 45 days to decide whether the agency will act on it. They all received the same response Henderson had: Send us what you have, and well get back to you. In November 2011 he was granted surgical privileges at Baylor Regional Medical Center of Plano. 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. During the surgery, Duntsch sliced into one of the arteries running down Summers spine, causing massive bleeding, which he tried to staunch by packing coagulants around the wound. Elena Nicolaou is the former culture editor at Oprah Daily. Their fellow physicians had found them committing such offenses as malpractice, sexual assault and drug use. The two-week trial especially focused on Mary Efurd's testimony. Given the graphic subject matter, if you're squeamish, keep your finger on the "fast forward" button while watching Dr. Death. At the time, Duntsch had been fielding offers in Dallas, San Diego and New York from medical centers eager to have a neurosurgeon with his seemingly impressive resume on staff. Morgan later secured a temporary protective order against him in April 2012 after telling authorities that Duntsch had come to her apartment at 2 a.m. and banged on her window, according to the podcast. Or, was he actually a skilled surgeon intent on defying the Hippocratic Oath, and deliberately causing harm? Duntsch continued to operate in the year it took for the board to investigate him. These doctors are busythey have practices of their own that pay a lot better than volunteering for the Medical Boardand there arent many of them. He was smart. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. He was a genius, Ellison said,adding that Morgan initially felt she had found the one.. Every year the board is both overseeing many more doctors and bringing in more money. The board, when it finally handed down an order in 2011, faulted him for both deaths. 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.. They showed photos of him as a baby, as a toddler, and as a boy getting a soccer ball for Christmas. "One surgeon described these as 'never events.' Another spinal fusion; another routine procedure. The Legislature has also made suing hospitals difficult. In 2012, when Efurd was 74, she saw Duntsch for what should have been a relatively simple surgery to fuse two of her vertebrae. The Legislature doesnt want the Medical Board taking a doctors licenseand livelihoodunnecessarily or based on flimsy or frivolous claims. He was convicted of injury to an elderly person in the 2012 surgery on Mary Efurd that put her in a. He wanted to live the high life and a neurosurgeon makes big bucks. "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. 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. By the time she was transferred to UT Southwestern Medical Center later that day, she was brain dead. But what is the real-life story behind Duntsch and Youngs complicated romance? "He was interpersonally a monster, a nightmare to be around. But in Texas, when you go to see a doctor, there is a small but real chance that the doctor has been found by his or her peers to be a danger to the public, and that no one has bothered to do anything about it yet. In the end, he blamed pride for his sons downfall. .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. After Christopher performed a spinal surgery on Mary in 2012, Mary suffered crippling pain afterward. 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. 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. 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. Young was soon pregnantbut Duntsch had already developed a wandering eye. Christopher Duntsch was just a regular guy who became Dr. Death after he decided to be a neurosurgeon. Yet Arafiles didnt surrender his license until November 2011, after he had been convicted of a felony. When she responds, shes quiet. Of the three in the academy, viz. 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." Nicknamed "Dr. Death," the story of Duntsch's egregious medical crimes and the healthcare system that failed so. They shouldnt ever happen in someones entire career. His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher. Ellisontold thepodcast that Morgan was instantly smitten with the doctor. It was just gone. Actually, hit the mute button, toothe sounds of botched surgeries are gruesome, made more horrifying knowing they're taken from real life. The hospital conducted an initial background check on Duntsch, and he came up clean. The board forbade Arafiles to supervise nurses or physician assistants anymore. (And if you want to dive even deeper into the story, you can also watch the new docuseries "Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story" on Peacock, which features interviews with numerous people intimately involved in the case.). He became a quadriplegic, and in February 2021, died from an infection connected to that very surgery one decade prior, per Local 24 News. Kayla Keegan leads Good Housekeepings editorial growth strategies in the partnership, news, social, branded, membership and newsletter spaces. My whole world crashed, he said. But Young would never get the happy ending she had envisioned with the doctor. Brown was later found unresponsive in her hospital room and staff couldnt contact Duntsch for 90 minutes, according to those records. In doing so, hospitals preserved Duntsch's reputation. The point isnt that all doctors are dangerous, or even that any more than a tiny minority are. "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. It was supposed to be such a simple procedure. 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. Jackson developed a perspective on his character. Duntsch went back into the operating room and left Don waiting. In January 2012, he assisted on one of Duntschs surgeries. 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. But the Medical Board wasnt designed to be an aggressive enforcer. Travel ban concerns some in Iowa, which relies on foreign-born doctors. Once Duntsch left Baylor, he was no longer the hospitals problem. To become a neurosurgeon, one typically has to complete over 1000 surgeries in residency, but somehow, reporter Laura Beil discovered that Duntsch only completed 100. Prince Charming, Im gonna change your life, Wendy Young said of the promising start to her romance with Christopher Duntsch. 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. Because investigations are confidential, Duntschs public record with the Texas Medical Board remained clean. I was very independent and I had to become dependent on others for transportation, for my meals, for a lot of things.". He was convicted of injury to an elderly person in the 2012 surgery on Mary Efurd that put her in a wheelchair. Its more or less satisfied with the way that things work.. 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 doesnt care what he has left in his wake.. Dr. Robert Henderson, a Dallas-based orthopedic surgeon who worked to alert authorities about Duntsch, had his own take. The conversation took place in January 2013, after it had become clear that Duntsch would practice until someone stopped him, six months before anyone actually did. Of that set, two died and 31 were paralyzed or seriously injured. These doctors are anomalies too. He was found guilty of his crimes in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison. In January, one of his patients at University General Hospital Dallas woke up paralyzed from the waist down, according to the patients lawyer. Site made in collaboration with CMYK. Christopher Duntsch shattered that trust over the course of a few years, ruining countless lives. In 2017, Duntsch was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of maiming one of his patients. He was a megalomaniac. 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 more than anything, we don't get to know Christopher Duntsch. Duntsch hired Morgan as his assistant while he was still with the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute in August of 2011. I am ready to leave the love and kindness and goodness and patience that I mix with everything else that I am and become a cold blooded killer.". For the next several months, he was in constant pain, according to Mike Lyons, his attorney. Baylor brought in a senior surgeon to fix the damage to Summers spine. Even the fact that the board is conducting an investigation remains confidential until the investigation is over. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. "He works out, he reads, he studies the Biblehell call and say goodnight to his boys. Duntsch, 40, met Wendy, 27, at a bar where she was working as a stripper. And yet they occurred in Duntschs operating rooms over a period of just two years," an article in D Magazine reads. For weeks, jurors heard the accounts of patients who had been maimed or paralyzed in bungled surgeries. Because the credentialing process is deemed confidential under Texas Law, we are not permitted to discuss specific physicians or specific requests other than to say all policies were followed.. Duntsch was arrested in July 2015. Another suffered a sliced vertebral artery which led to a stroke and later death. Duntsch was an anomaly, one of the worst malpractice cases Texas has seen in decades. 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. 2023 . At the end of May 2013, Kirby and Henderson received invitations to a celebratory dinner, courtesy of University General Hospital, to meet their new neurosurgeon, Dr. Christopher Duntsch, at an expensive uptown restaurant. A charismatic, charming monster but still a monster but he saw himself as the hero of his own story. 300 (2.48 per match) 2021. He was functioning at a first- or second-year neurosurgical resident level but had no apparent insight into how bad his technique was.. After losing his license, Duntsch filed for bankruptcy and returned to Colorado, where his parents live. 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. Forty-five minutes passed, then an hour, two hours, with no word. By all appearances, he had simply decided to leave. 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. CHRISTOPHER Duntsch, is infamously known as Dr Death for gross malpractice. Efurd, who is now wheelchair-bound, spoke to reporters following the sentencing. Instead, Duntsch would find himself behind bars for life after botching more than 30 surgeriesresulting in the death of two patients and earning him the nickname Dr. How much risk can there be?. But Public Citizen found that of those 793 doctors, the Texas Medical Board had taken serious action in less than half the cases. A poorly put-together case can mean months or years of expensive litigation. 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.. In Duntschs case, we see the weakness of Texas unregulated system of health care, a system built to protect doctors and hospitals. A Texas neurosurgeon accused of intentionally botching multiple spinal surgeries, resulting in the death of two . 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. The eight-episode series is anticipated to be a thrilling watch. Another woman named Megan Kane claimed he ate a paper blotter of LSD and took prescription painkillers in the early 2000s on his birthday. 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. Do you think free access to journalism like this is important? Hewould go on to have another child with Youngwho finally split from the struggling doctor by 2014. Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal. You know, hell call and say goodnight to his boys, um, sometimes hell have bedtime stories and try to be as normal as possible.. Kimberly Morgan is the former assistant and ex-girlfriend of Christopher Duntsch, nicknamed Dr Death. He didnt tell them about Baylors internal reports that faulted him in both cases, according to Henderson. 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. . The operation was a spinal fusion in which two vertebrae are joined; surgeons use a metal plate to help hold the vertebrae together. Up until 2003, medical care in Texas was regulated by a system of checks. Christopher Duntsch wrote that he was ready to become a "cold blooded killer". "The nerve root had been severed. It was that egregious. His performance, Kirby wrote, was pathetic . Partners must notify. Duntschs license is currently on temporary suspension pending further action by the board. When he arrived in Dallas in late 2010, Duntsch's resume spoke of a skilled neurosurgeon: An M.D. Another had 13 civil judgments against him, including for wrongful death, permanent injury and two cases of removing the wrong body part. And Ill reflect back on how difficult those first months were afterwards. Whatever the reason, this time the board acted. He was the eldest of four.They described him as the bright, precocious little boy who had taken care of a sick bird and loved dogs. Duntsch was first reported to the state medical board in 2012, per the Texas Observer. Goals scored. Mr. and a Ph.D. from a top-tier medical school, a decade of experience, and a central role in a pioneering stem-cell treatment. 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. In 2003, the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature capped pain-and-suffering damages in medical malpractice lawsuits at $250,000. Because of greed. You could have a Medical Board thats the size of the [Texas Department of Public Safety], she said, but the state doesnt want that. Mr. When Summers woke up he couldnt move his arms or legs. Later, when Duntsch moved to Dallas to begin his career as a neurosurgeon he took Summers with him.