Jerry Summers Was 'Dr. Death's' Best Friend. Famously known by the Family name Christopher Daniel Duntsch, is a great neurosurgeon and convicted criminal for malpractice.He was born on April 3, 1971, in Montana. How could Dr. Christopher Duntsch practice medicine for as long as he did without being stopped? After his license was revoked,Duntsch fled from Texas. Did Christopher Duntsch have a wife and kids? It was determined during the repair surgery that Dr. Duntsch had not even been operating on the correct part of Jeff Glidewell's spine. Ratings for Dr. Christopher D. Duntsch, Inactive. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a motion to intervene in the suits to defend Baylor Plano, citing the Texas legislature's 2003 statute that placed a medical malpractice cap of $250,000, and removed the term "gross negligence" from the definition of legal malice. With Brown still in the ICU, Duntsch took another patient into surgery that morning. He was wearing the shirt of his black scrubs, and it was covered in blood. He later told Glidewell that it was clear Duntsch had tried to kill him. [4] Mayfield died of COVID-19 in February 2021; according to his wife, he had been vulnerable to the virus due to complications caused by Duntsch's botched surgeries. [9] He was suspected of being under the influence of cocaine while operating during his fourth year of residency training, and was sent to a program for impaired physicians. Around 2006 and 2007, Duntsch began to become unhinged. [18] He damaged patient Philip Mayfield's spinal cord, drilling into it and leaving him partially paralyzed from the neck down. Duntsch pierced and blocked her vertebral artery with a misplaced screw and refused to stop despite the massive blood loss. Death'? He called Duntsch's fellowship supervisor in Memphis and 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. i feel much better now ! He will be up for parole in 2045, when he is 74 years old. is a beautiful and populous city located in Montana U.S. . The first season of Dr. Death, which launched in 2018 and ran for seven episodes, examined the life and horrific crimes of Christopher Duntsch. However, he closed Glidewell with the sponge in place despite others in the operating room warning him about it. Dr. Christopher D. Duntsch, Inactive - Plano, TX - RateMDs Duntsch did not respond to messages from the hospital for a few hours, then the next day scheduled an elective surgery on Efurd rather than care for Brown. He was nicknamed Dr. D. and Dr. Death for malpractice resulting in the maiming of several patients and killing two of them while working at hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Death. They argued that Duntsch was motivated to continue operating because the lucrative salary of a neurosurgeon would solve his mounting financial problems. Trusty was never told she was participating in an infomercial and believed Duntsch had been selected as the top neurosurgeon in Dallas and was participating in a video about the award. He avoided it and disappeared for several days. Cheney recalled wondering why a neurosurgeon with such outstanding credentials would be operating at a lower-tiered hospital on the way to his surgery. By this time, however, Brown was brain dead. On April 9, 2013, Phillip Mayfield was scheduled to have a simple 45-minute operation to alleviate his back pain. Although she didn't think much of it and assumed Morgan was helping with research. [9] Duntsch's defense blamed their client's actions on poor training and lack of oversight by the hospitals. Podcast de Dr Death: La verdadera historia de Christopher Duntsch que His father, Donald, was a physical therapist and Christian missionary, and his mother, Susan, was a schoolteacher. MARY EFURD vs CHRISTOPHER D DUNTSCH, MDet al - UniCourt After a breath test, Duntsch was arrested for DUI and sent to a detox facility. [7] He likened what he found when he opened Efurd up to the results of a child playing with Tinkertoys or an erector set. In November 2011, he was hooked on the prescription opiates that numbed the pain in his lower back. The appalling actions of the rogue surgeon and their repercussions on his unsuspecting patients were . Facebook Wendy Renee Young and Christopher Duntsch. Hoyle called the surgery sloppy enough to cancel the remaining four operations he had scheduled with Duntsch and vowed never to work with him again. The last charge was for the maiming and paralyzing of Efurd. 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. Jerry Summers, who grew up with Christopher Duntsch in Tennessee, was left a quadriplegic after agreeing to let "Dr. Death" operate on his neck. Under heavy lobbying from Kirby and Henderson, the Texas Medical Board suspended Duntsch's license on June 26, 2013. "It's a miracle," she said in the infomercial later promoted on his website. Berry Morguloff was Dr. Duntsch's next unsuspecting victim. The Terrifying True Story Behind Peacock's Dr. Death - E! Online However, Mayfield still woke up with paralysis on occasion. Next week marks the five-year anniversary of Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch being sentenced to life in prison. In addition, a ligament in his leg was severed, and a screw was stripped and lodged into a nerve bundle. Despite all of this, Duntsch was retained by South Hampton when new owners bought it and renamed it University General Hospital. Updated Dec 9, 2022 at 3:25pm. and Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee Health Center. No show's ever made you as terrified of doctors as 'Dr. Death' will That same month, the two began an affair. Left: Christopher Duntsch in surgery, Right: Christopher Duntschs mugshot. However, things soon went south. All the while, the operating room staff questioned whether Duntsch was putting hardware into Efurd in the right places and noticed he kept drilling and removing screws. Lee Passmore was thirty-seven and worked as a field agent for the Collin County medical examiner. When Henderson opened the freshly made incisions on her, he was appalled. No one can pay to remove ratings. The surgical disasters of neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch led to his jailing in 2017, setting a legal precedent. No one came out and spoke with Kellie Martin's family or informed them of her condition during this time. [4] [19], Despite both of his surgeries at Dallas Medical Center going catastrophically awry, hospital officials did not report him to the NPDB. They met with an assistant DA but got little traction. Troy was left barely able to speak above a whisper, had to be sedated for weeks and had to be fed through a feeding tube for some time as food was getting into her lungs. Dr. Rimlawi called Baylor Plano and advised them against continuing a relationship with Christopher Duntsch, but this fell to deaf ears. Baylor wanted Duntsch operating quickly and often so they could be reimbursed for the monies they had advanced to him. Duntsch had also installed hardware into her muscle, not her bone, so loose that it moved when you touched it. Philip is one of more than 30 people maimed by Dr. Christopher Duntsch, nicknamed Dr. Death by the media. Dr. Fulton never worked with Duntsch again. [12], Initially, Duntsch focused heavily on the PhD half of his degree. The Dallas district attorney's office subpoenaed every hospital on Duntsch's CV for records of his surgeries. In 2005, about a third of the way through his residency, department chairman Dr. Jon Robertson appointed Duntsch program director of the school's tissue bank. In his first surgery after his suspension lifted, he nicked the vertebral artery of Kellie Martin, a 55-year-old Garland woman. [8] Duntsch returned home to attend Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis). Christopher Duntsch: The Remorseless Killer Surgeon Called 'Dr. Death' His pain management specialist advised against an operation but referred him to a neurosurgeon named Christopher Duntsch. He was held in the Dallas County jail for almost two years until the case went to trial in 2017. Baylor Plano allowed Duntsch to continue operating despite the documented issues with Kenneth Fennell, Mary Efurd, Lee Passmore, and Barry Morguloff's surgeries. Christopher Duntsch was just a regular guy who became Dr. Death after he decided to be a neurosurgeon. It stars Joshua Jackson as Duntsch, Alec Baldwin as Robert Henderson, Christian Slater as Randall Kirby and AnnaSophia Robb as Michelle Shughart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Duntsch, https://www.propublica.org/article/dr-death-christopher-duntsch-a-surgeon-so-bad-it-was-criminal, https://www.dmagazine.com/healthcare-business/2021/10/a-witness-to-dr-death-in-the-presence-of-a-sociopath/, https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2016/november/christopher-duntsch-dr-death/, https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/who-were-the-victims-of-dr-christopher-duntsch, https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2014/03/02/planos-baylor-hospital-faces-hard-questions-after-claims-against-former-neurosurgeon/, https://www.texasobserver.org/anatomy-tragedy/, https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2015/08/25/7-chilling-thoughts-of-jailed-neurosurgeon-christopher-duntsch/, https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/greg-abbott-enters-fray-in-lawsuits-involving-sociopath-doctor/, https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2017/02/a-jury-now-controls-the-fate-of-neurosurgeon-christopher-duntsch/, https://www.thedailybeast.com/victim-of-real-life-dr-death-believes-there-are-others-like-him-out-there?ref=scroll, https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/what-happened-to-discgenics-co-founded-by-dr-death-christopher-duntsch, https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Morguloff-Complaint.pdf. Dr. Death in surgery. When Morgan asked Duntsch about the woman in his house, he said she was just his secretary and friend. The problem was that Dallas Medical Center did not perform those or even have the proper equipment to do them. The first screening came back diluted with tap water, but a second, taken a few days later, came back clean. Duntsch's next patient was Jeff Glidewell. Peacock's Dr. Death is a chilling dramatization of the real-life story of former neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch. She was dancing at a strip club in Memphis, and Duntsch's issues with his business, DiscGenics, grew more severe. Many of his patients suffered severe spinal cord damage, resulting in paralysis and pain severe enough to render painkillers ineffective. He decided to turn to neurosurgery, which can be a lucrative field. When Martin awoke from anesthesia, she was screaming and clawing at her legs which had become patchy and full of purple streaks and spots. B. Ellis Unit outside Huntsville. However, the surgery had to be moved to November 14 because Duntsch had failed to order the appropriate surgical hardware and equipment. He is a graduate of Evangelical Christian School in the Cordova suburb of Memphis, where he starred in football.[7]. During surgery, Duntsch operated on the wrong part of Fennell's back.