Duntsch appealed his sentence and lost the appeal in 2018. For one, there was alleged drug and alcohol abuse. He will not be eligible for parole until 2045, when he will be 74-years-old. For 33 patients of Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, it was a reality. Efurd woke up after surgery in horrible pain, barely able to move her legs. Kirby had spent 16 years performing general surgery in the Dallas area, in which time hed assisted on more than 2,000 spine operations. Even more surprising, these crimes came from a doctor who looked great on paper. The "deadly weapons" were his hands and surgical tools. Duntsch, 44, is the first surgeon known to be sentenced to prison for a botched surgery. At his home and office, my calls rang and rang before going to voicemail boxes that were full. Ill do some crying. Dr. Death is a new true-crime series on Peacock about the story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch. The Terrifying True Story Behind Peacock's Dr. Death - Yahoo The point isnt that all doctors are dangerous, or even that any more than a tiny minority are. Young told D Magazine she was forced to move from her Dallas home after investigators started camping out on her street and attorneys started waiting in the stairwell of her apartment, looking for Duntsch. Duntschwho was just completing a prestigious spine surgery fellowship in Tennesseebought Young an appletini and the two immediately clicked. 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. But as investigators took a look back at Christopher's history and consulted with those who knew him, what they discovered was quite disturbing. I was very independent and I had to become dependent on others for transportation, for my meals, for a lot of things.". Whatever the reason, this time the board acted. Public Citizen concluded that the board moves slowly because its understaffed and underfunded. 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. 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. Death Series, Dr. Unlike with Summers, though, he hadnt noticed in time, and Martin bled to death, according to Texas Medical Board records. After his wife died, Don Martin found himself at a loss. They showed photos of him as a baby, as a toddler, and as a boy getting a soccer ball for Christmas. A charismatic, charming monster but still a monster but he saw himself as the hero of his own story. Hes been devastated, Don Duntsch said. At one point Dr. Henderson sent me a tape of a conversation he had with the main Medical Board investigator assigned to Duntschs case. 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. I was very independent and I had to become dependent on others for transportation, for my meals, for a lot of things," she said. He waited until they told him his wife had been sent to the intensive care unit. Dr. Christopher Duntschs patients ended up maimed and dead, but the real tragedy is that the Texas Medical Board couldnt stop him. Christopher Duntsch was just a regular guy who became Dr. Death after he decided to be a neurosurgeon. Mr. According to Baylor, Duntsch had clinical privileges when he resigned. "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 convicted of injury to an elderly person in the 2012 surgery on Mary Efurd that put her in a wheelchair. Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal. The surgery, he said, beaming into the camera, was a resounding success. Wendy Young believed she had finally met her Prince Charming after crossing paths with Christopher Duntsch. One patient had a stroke following a chelation therapy. Duntsch hired Morgan as his assistant while he was still with the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute in August of 2011. According to Kirby, the hospital owner told him that Duntsch had privileges to do only minimally invasive surgeries. They just cant comprehend that an M.D.-Ph.D. neurosurgeon could do what Christopher Duntsch was doing. He had no idea what he was doing. Two days later, once Efurd was stable, Henderson was assigned to do the repair surgery. His victims also had descriptors. He saw himself as a brilliant doctor and a brilliant surgeon. Next week marks the five-year anniversary of Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch being sentenced to life in prison. In telling the story of Duntsch, both the series and podcast reveal how a flawed system allowed him to operate for so long. CHRISTOPHER Duntsch, is infamously known as Dr Death for gross malpractice. Sometimes hell have bedtime stories and try to be as normal as possible.". 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. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. Outlets must also tag the Observer in all social media posts. "Ninety-nine percent of everything that has been said about me is completely false.". 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. 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. Brown was later found unresponsive in her hospital room and staff couldnt contact Duntsch for 90 minutes, according to those records. 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. He was brilliant. 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. And Ill reflect back on how difficult those first months were afterwards. He had a doctorate in molecular biology as well as a medical degree from the University. Further, both works question Duntsch's perspective. This what Ive waited for four and half years., Follow Tanya Eiserer on Twitter: @tanyaeiserer. 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. Ill do some crying. 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. He hired a marketing team and nurses. One might think that if a doctor had paralyzed one patient and had another die in the course of a month, it would be someones job to figure out why. Then he waited for several more hours until the nurses came out to tell him and his daughters that Kellie Martin was dead. When the Medical Board suspended Duntschs license, the agencys spokespeople too seemed shocked. Death Based On A True Story, Joshua Jackson On Role Of Surgeon, Christopher Duntsch, In Peacocks Dr. For the last three days, jurors listened to testimony in the . Goals scored. 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. 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. The series is based on reporting from the podcast Dr. Death, from the same production studio that created Dirty John. But in the past 10 years, a series of conservative reforms have severely limited patients options for holding doctors and hospitals accountable for bad care. Senior Editor, Editorial Business Development, Where Is Dr. Death Now?

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