Anatomy of a Tragedy. After 13 days of trial, the jury needed only four hours to convict him for the maiming of Efurd, and on February 20, 2017, he was sentenced to life in prison. He recommended fusing two of her vertebrae and the insertion of "hardware" in her spinal area. Duntsch had his surgical rights temporarily suspended after his botched surgery on Summers and his first patient back was 55-year-old Kellie Martin. To stop the bleeding, he packed the space with so much anticoagulant foam that it constricted Summers' spine. Peacock's new grisly drama tells the real-life story of Dallas-area neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, who killed or maimed more than 30 patients in the 2010s. [9][10], Duntsch had severed Brown's vertebral artery, and refused to abort despite the massive blood loss. By this time, Jerry Summers, his childhood friend, had moved from Tennessee to live with Duntsch. Her husband could not hold himself up; he had no support of his own and could barely speak. Unfortunately, when Morguloff woke up, he began to experience continuous pain, paresthesia, and loss of sensation in his left leg. The first screening came back diluted with tap water, but a second, taken a few days later, came back clean. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Im the only clean minimally invasive guy in the whole state.. ", "Doctor Guilty of Felony Medical Malpractice", "Disciplinary actions against doctors have plunged during the pandemic, but that doesn't mean they are behaving", "An Update on Dr. Death Victim Philip Mayfield", "Jeff Glidewell Today: Where Is Dr. Death's Last Patient Now? Although he wasn't a talented athlete, he trained for hours on his own and made it as a linebacker on his high school football team at Evangelical Christian School in Memphis. Despite this refusal, Duntsch was allowed to finish his residency. One screw was jabbed directly into her spinal canal and had skewered the nerves that control one leg and the bladder. Having exhausted his football eligibility, Duntsch decided to switch to a career in medicine. In November 2011, he was hooked on the prescription opiates that numbed the pain in his lower back. [19][25][7] She later recalled waking up feeling "excruciating pain", a "ten-plus" on a scale of 1 to 10. However, on January 6, 2012, a week after the surgery, Dr. Duntsch performed another operation on Passmore. Where is Christopher Duntsch AKA Dr. Death now? [7] He lasted for less than a week before administrators pulled his privileges after the death of a patient, Floella Brown, and the maiming of another, Mary Efurd. Hospital officials were exasperated when Duntsch refused to delay Efurd's surgery, and asked him multiple times to care for Brown or transfer her out of his care. 2-Dr.Randall Kirby, a hero. It had come from Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano. Officers said he was driving on the left side of the road with two flat tires. [4], After 13 days of trial, the jury needed only four hours to convict him for the maiming of Efurd. In 2011, Christopher Duntsch met Wendy Young at the Beauty Shop bar in Memphis. Death' found guilty of maiming woman during surgery", "Former neurosurgeon sentenced for purposely maiming patients", "Doctor convicted of botched surgery gets life in prison", "Christopher Daniel Duntsch v. The State of Texas Appeal from Criminal District Court No. This time on 53-year-old Mary Efurd. 'Hot TikTok doc' urges young people to get jabbed - warning of dangers of long Covid, Daughter, 39, guilty of stabbing mum to death before setting house on fire and dumping her dismembered body in river, Pregnant beautician loses baby after savage beating by monster husband who kidnapped her amid divorce row, Shocking moment man is crushed to death by an enraged elephant after crowd taunts herd of jumbos. Dr Deathis a new limited series about the rise and fall of Duntsch. [18] He damaged patient Philip Mayfield's spinal cord, drilling into it and leaving him partially paralyzed from the neck down. [9], In March 2014, three former patients of Duntsch's Mary Efurd, Kenneth Fennel, and Lee Passmore filed separate federal lawsuits against Baylor Plano, alleging the hospital allowed Duntsch to perform surgeries despite knowing that he was a dangerous physician. In 2017, Duntsch was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of maiming one of his patients. He did his surgical residency at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, spending five years studying neurosurgery and a year studying general surgery. Had Duntsch been fired, Baylor Plano would have been required to report him to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), which is intended to flag problematic physicians. He had a bedroom upstairs in their Plano house. He declared bankruptcy after listing debts of over $1 million. However, part of the problem was proving that Duntsch's actions were willful as defined by Texas law. "It's a miracle," she said in the infomercial later promoted on his website. Duntsch is a former neurosurgeon born in 1971 in Montana . D MagazineChristopher Duntsch a.k.a. Dhruv Trivedi. Death.. Duntsch's defense blamed their client's actions on poor training and lack of hospital oversight. [4] In an article for The Texas Prosecutor, the journal of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, Shughart and the other members of the trial team recalled that their superiors were initially skeptical when they presented the case, but eventually found themselves in "overwhelming disbelief" that a surgeon could do what Duntsch was accused of doing. Baylor wanted Duntsch operating quickly and often so they could be reimbursed for the monies they had advanced to him. He called Duntsch's fellowship supervisor in Memphis, as well as the supervisor of Duntsch's residency; it was then that he learned about the incident that led him to be referred to the impaired physician program. Every victim deserves to have their story told, and unfortunately, Christopher Duntsch, aka Dr. Death, has 33. Film & TV 'Dr. Death' Condemns Christopher Duntsch, but the Real Culprit Is Texas's Broken Health-Care System I helped break the story on the convicted surgeon, but Peacock's dramatized . By the end of the week, administrators told Duntsch he would no longer be operating at Dallas Medical Center. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. He was told he would never be able to walk again. She came in to have two vertebrae fused, but when she woke up she experienced severe pain and couldnt stand. Dr. Death in surgery. She witnessed Duntsch put on his lab coat and make his rounds the following morning as if nothing had happened. (The Associated Press) A Texas neurosurgeon branded a "sociopath" by his colleagues could be facing 99 years in prison over multiple charges of intentionally botching . 2020 THE SUN, US, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY | YOUR AD CHOICES | SITEMAP, Duntsch, aka Dr Death, was sentenced to life in prison in 2017, Dr Death - Trailer for the Peacock series based on the true story of Christopher Duntsch. [19][16] Kirby claimed that it looked as if Duntsch had tried to decapitate Glidewell and contended that such a botched surgery "has not happened in the United States of America" before. [4], Early in his tenure at Baylor Plano, Duntsch made a poor impression on his fellow surgeons. 3-Jeff Glidewell, another victim of Duntsch's. 4-Michelle Shugart, the woman who brought this all to fruition . The patient was Mary Efurd coming in for a second operation. After undergoing physical rehabilitation, Mayfield was able to walk with a cane but continued to experience paralysis on the right side of his body and in his left arm. If you had back pain, and had tried everything else, Dr. Duntsch could give you the spine surgery that would take your pain away. On April 9, 2013, Phillip Mayfield was scheduled to have a simple 45-minute operation to alleviate his back pain. July 19, 2021. Though he appealed his conviction in 2018, it was denied. (Dallas County Jail via AP) Gift Article. [38], Duntsch is housed at the O. At the time, Duntsch was looking for operating prospects in Dallas, San Diego, and New York. In a long running series of complaints, a Texas doctor has been found guilty of a felony in one medical malpractice case. Finally, Dr. Kirby received a call from Hassan Chahadeh. Of those 38, 31 were leftparalyzed or seriously injured and two of them died from surgical complications. Left: Christopher Duntsch in surgery, Right: Christopher Duntschs mugshot. Troy was sedated for weeks and forced to eat through a feeding tube because food was getting into her lungs. "Based on a hit podcast and inspired by the terrifying true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a young and charismatic star in the Texas medical community," Peacock explains about the series. He was held in the Dallas County jail for almost two years until the case went to trial in 2017. "[32][9] ADA Michelle Shughart, who led the prosecution of Duntsch, later recalled that Henderson, Kirby, and Lazar contacted her demanding to testify against Duntsch; according to Shughart, doctors almost never testify against each other. Mr. She was left with just one vocal cord. [9][16], As part of their investigation, prosecutors obtained a December 2011 email in which Duntsch boasted that he was " 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. In my opinion, we had a serial killer in our medical community, Dr. Randall Kirbysays of Christopher Duntsch in "Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story.". His father, Donald, was a physical therapist and Christian missionary. Christopher Duntsch - AKA Dr. Death - spent 18 months as a practicing surgeon at multiple Texas hospitals until he had his license revoked in 2013. He refused to abort the surgery even after a trauma surgeon colleague and an anesthesiologist warned him about the blood loss. Duntsch was suspected of having used cocaine the night before the operation. He earned his M.D. "[3] A neurosurgery expert for Duntsch's defense team himself said, "The conditions which created Dr.Duntsch still exist, thereby making it possible for another to come along. Through it all, Duntsch was able to lure patient after patient under his knife was his extreme confidence. They didn't have enough evidence to stop him because he hadn't done anything wrong yet. In April 2015, Duntsch was arrested again for shoplifting $887 worth of merchandise from a Dallas Walmart. Christopher was raised along with his three younger siblings in a wealthy suburb in Memphis, Tennessee. [47] A follow-up docuseries, Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story, was later released on Peacock on July 29, 2021, featuring interviews with some of Duntsch's patients and colleagues, as well as with Henderson, Kirby and Shughart. He is not eligible for parole until 2045; he will be 74 years old by then. [12], Initially, Duntsch focused heavily on the PhD half of his degree. Henderson and Kirby feared that Duntsch could move and theoretically get a medical license in another state. The staff told Duntsch that Brown, his patient from the day before, was in critical condition. I thought he was either really, really good, or hes just really, really arrogant and thought he was good, Hoyle said. He has taken Baylor Plano to court over changing the Texas law requiring patients to prove that a hospital intended to harm them when it granted privileges to someone unsafe. The series is set to premiere on July 12 and will feature a star-studded cast. We've had a catastrophic event here. Passmore says if he settles, he is allowing the hospital to continue to get away with their negligence. Floella Brown went under Dr. Deaths knife in July 2012 and shortly after her surgery, she suffered a massive stroke caused by Duntsch slicing her vertebral artery during surgery. However, Duntsch was allowed to resign, and the hospital didn't notify the National Practitioner Data Bankagain. So as Duntsch operated on Efurd, he quarreled with Kissinger and his supervisors, insisting on a craniotomy for Brown. Glidewell was reportedly still suffering the ill effects of Duntsch's operation years later and has undergone more than 50 procedures to correct the damage. Jodi Smith. The Judge overseeing this case is GINSBERG, CARL. Promising Beginnings. He is not eligible for parole until 2045, when he will be 74 years old. Dr Death, un nuevo programa que llegar a Peacock el jueves (15 de julio), se basa en la historia de la vida real de Christopher Duntsch, un ex neurocirujano que era, como dijo un famoso titular de ProPublica, "tan malo que era criminal".. Joshua Jackson interpreta a Duntsch, que ahora tiene 50 aos y cumple cadena perpetua despus de ser condenado en 2017 por mutilar a uno de sus . Duntsch boasted to his assistant and mistress, Kimberly Morgan, that he was " 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." When he arrived, Nurse Kyle Kissinger spotted a hole in Duntsch's scrubs. Muse spiraled into opioid addiction that cost him his wife and his job. Duntsch earned his undergraduate degree in 1995 and enrolled at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. But, she never reported Duntsch up the ladder or told anyone about the horrors she witnessed in the operating room. He proved to be Duntsch's last surgery; University General pushed him out soon afterward. His father, Donald, was a physical therapist and Christian missionary. Plans start at $4.99/month. However, he sewed up Glidewell with the sponge still in place despite others in the operating room warning him about it. The appalling actions of the rogue surgeon and their repercussions on his unsuspecting patients were . His older son had been born back when he was at Baylor Plano. A Texas jury found Christopher Duntsch guilty Feb. 14 of maiming patients who had turned to him for surgery to resolve debilitating injuries. Morgan says they spent a lot of time in clubs. Ellis Unit outside of Huntsville, Texas. He is currently appealing this sentence. When he woke up, he was a quadriplegic with incomplete paralysis. Christopher Duntsch ended up at Millsaps College in Mississippi to play football and was offered financial aid. Glidewell is still in constant pain and has undergone more than 50 procedures to correct the damage left by Duntsch. Duntsch is a serial maimer and killer. "[45], Wondery Media launched a ten-episode podcast series named Dr. Death, focusing on Duntsch. However, Mayfield still woke up with paralysis on occasion. [18] Despite this, Duntsch was retained by South Hampton when new owners bought it and renamed it University General Hospital. Randall Kirby wrote a detailed complaint to the Texas Medical Board, calling Duntsch a "sociopath" who was "a clear and present danger to the citizens of Texas." In one particularly disturbing episode, in March 2015, she said she arrived home to her front door had been locked with a deadbolt from the inside. Dallas-based surgeon Christopher Duntsch was also the subject of a Wondery podcast titled "Dr. Death." (Dallas County Jail) The indictment accused Duntsch of wide-ranging malpractice, including . and Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee Health Center. Unfortunately, it's all too real. Journalists must draw attention to the failures in the U.S. medical and legal systems that allowed Christopher Duntsch, the subject of journalist Laura Beil's well-regarded "Dr. Death" podcast series, to injure dozens of patients, members of an expert panel said at the "10 years after 'Dr. Death': Are patients any safer from bad doctors?" panel at Health Journalism 2022 in Austin. From 2017: https://bit.ly/3hXJccx An investigator by trade and nature, Passmore started digging into Dr. Christopher Duntsch. [37][4], Over objections from Duntsch's lawyers, prosecutors called many of Duntsch's other patients to the stand in order to prove that his actions were intentional. Getty Dr. Duntsch, aka "Dr. Death", operated on his last patient in 2013, before he was arrested. At one point, an assisting surgeon named Dr. Hoyle observed Duntsch performing such alarming and erratic behavior; he grabbed his hands and pleaded with him to stop. [40][41] On May 8, 2019, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused Duntschs petition for discretionary review. Jerry Summers Was 'Dr. Death's' Best Friend. He then packed it with too much of a substance intended to stop the bleeding. However, it wouldnt be long until Duntschs seemingly perfect career began to unravel. He was sent to a program for impaired physicians when he returned but was allowed to finish his residency. Before going to medical school, Duntsch wanted to be a pro-football player. In the end, Floella Brown never regained consciousness because Duntsch refused to transfer her to another doctor in time, and her family had to remove her from life support. They argued that Duntsch was motivated to continue operating because the lucrative salary of a neurosurgeon would solve his mounting financial problems. It stars Joshua Jackson as Duntsch, Alec Baldwin as Robert Henderson, Christian Slater as Randall Kirby and AnnaSophia Robb as Michelle Shughart. Could you take care of it?" As a young neurosurgeon in Texas, Duntsch killed . As a result of the 2017 trial, Duntsch was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. [7], When Duntsch applied for privileges at Methodist Hospital in Dallas, the hospital queried the NPDB. When he called Duntsch's office, he was told it would "go away." As Burke says in "Dr. Death," "No matter what happens, no matter what somebody does to you or the people you love, all you're gonna get is $250,000. On December 30, 2011, Duntsch operated on Lee Passmore. Kirby claimed that it looked as if Duntsch had tried to decapitate Glidewell and contended that such a botched surgery has not happened in the United States of America before. Unfortunately, when Fennell woke up from surgery, he was paralyzed from the waist down. WFAA-TVChristopher Duntsch a.k.a. Dr. Death, read about how reckless surgeon Robert Liston killed his patient and two bystanders. He then prescribed Muse so much Percocet that a pharmacist refused to fill the prescription. [6], Christopher Duntsch was born in Montana and spent most of his youth in Memphis, Tennessee. He later told Glidewell that it was clear Duntsch had tried to kill him. When Morgan asked Duntsch about the woman in his house, he said she was just his secretary and friend. The process involves cutting a hole in the skull to relieve the pressure in the brain. It was determined during the repair surgery that Dr. Duntsch had not even been operating on the correct part of Jeff Glidewell's spine. After his license was revoked,Duntsch fled from Texas. Duntsch recommended fusing Morguloff's L5-S1 vertebrae, and the surgery was scheduled for January 11, 2012. He completed a spine fellowship program at the Semmes-Murphey Clinic in Memphis for his surgical residency, spending the standard five years on neurosurgery and one-year learning general surgery. Christopher Duntsch, once a supremely confident neurosurgeon with a solid rsum and a wealth of potential, fled town in disgrace last year under a scalding cascade . Duntsch moved to Denver, Colorado, and went into a downward spiral. Summers asked Duntsch to fix his chronic neck pain from a high school football injury that had gotten worse after a car accident. She was 27, and he was 40. Out of his 38 surgeries, only three had no complications. He was brilliant. As a result, Summers lost almost 1,200 mL of blood. In January 2013, Kenneth Fennell was scheduled for another operation because he was still experiencing extreme pain in his back. Ghostbar, Dragonfly at Hotel Zaza. Now, a podcast called Dr. Death is breaking down the deranged surgeons criminal acts and shows how drug abuse and blinding overconfidence led to big trouble for the patients who found themselvesunderneath the spiraling doctors knife. Dr. Robert Henderson was brought in on July 28, 2012, to perform a revision surgery on Efurd. Despite all of this, Duntsch was retained by South Hampton when new owners bought it and renamed it University General Hospital. Barry Morguloff, the owner of a pool service company, was left with bone fragments in his spinal canal after Duntsch tried to pull a damaged, Jerry Summers, a longtime friend of Duntsch's, came to Plano to have, Kellie Martin was undergoing a routine back operation when Duntsch cut through her spinal cord and severed an artery. [38] Shughart countered that the 2011 email, sent after his first surgeries went wrong, proved that Duntsch knew his actions were intentional. 0:57. Jeff Glidewell came across Dr. Christopher Duntsch in 2013 while searching for a neurosurgeon . Kissinger also noticed that Duntsch had pinpoint pupils and hardly seemed to blink. "Dr. Death" is based on the chart-topping podcast of the same name that, in turn, is based on the horrifying true story of Christopher Duntsch. There are many sick people in the world, but Duntsch takes the cake for me. He also reported shooting pains throughout his body. In 2010, he completed the MDPhD and neurosurgery residency programs at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center,[3] and subsequently completed a spine fellowship program at the Semmes-Murphey Clinic in Memphis. However, it wasn't clear how much training Duntsch received. Premiering Thursday on . i feel much better now ! In 2006, Duntsch teamed up with two Russian stem cell scientists: Valery Kukekov and Tatyana Ignatova. [4][5] In 2017, he was convicted of maiming one of his patients and sentenced to life imprisonment. Before the surgery, Kirby related that Duntsch said he was the best spine surgeon in Dallas and the only spine surgeon trained in minimally invasive spine surgery. For instance, he came to work wearing the same tattered scrubs for three days in a row. A disc in his lower spine had blown out, and the pieces had to be picked out of the space above. South Hampton Community Hospital in Dallas (now University General Hospital). Board chairman Irwin Zeitzler later said that complications in neurosurgery were more common than most laymen believe, and it took until June 2013 to find the "pattern of patient injury" required to justify suspending Duntsch's license. Christopher Duntsch was sentenced to life in prison in February 2017 for his heinous acts. Dr. Duntsch came from a good family and showed considerable potential at medical school. The hospital called Rimlawi when it couldn't reach his colleague. The two went back to Duntsch's home and danced under a disco ball he had in his office. Now, a podcast called Dr. Death is breaking down the deranged surgeon's criminal acts and shows how drug abuse and blinding overconfidence led to big trouble for the patients who found themselves underneath the spiraling doctor's knife.. Christopher Duntsch, known as "Dr. Death" tried to explain himself in rambling emails, but he only made things worse for his criminal case. Duntsch also appears in no yearbooks during the time in which he says he earned his Ph.D.