A DOCTOR who removed the wrong organ from a patient has a history of errors and has finally had their license suspended.
Thomas Shakvovksy was a practicing Osteopathic Physician at Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital in Florida.
The Pensacola doctor has now been accused of a botched surgery – removing a man’s liver instead of the spleen, killing him.
He even said “that’s scary” when he felt a vessel pulsing under his finger just seconds before his patient died, a new report claims.
Florida’s Surgeon General has now accused Shakvovksy of “repeated egregious surgical errors” in the August 21 death of 70-year-old William Bryan.
Bryan and his wife Beverly were visiting the Florida panhandle from their home in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, when he began experiencing lower left abdominal pain.
The pair went to hospital in Miramar Beach where doctors admitted him for further testing.
That found a suspected enlarged spleen and blood in his peritoneum – the membrane encasing key abdominal organs.
Bryan accepted surgery to deal with the issue, with Shakvovksy tasked to carry out the “complicated procedure”.
Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s report about the tragedy says that staff believed Shakvovksy was not skilled enough to do the job.
It found that Shaknovsky quickly elected to convert to an open procedure citing poor visibility due to Bryan’s “distended colon and blood in the abdomen.”
But when he started cutting inside Bryan, he began slicing ligaments attached to the liver, not the spleen.
The liver is located on the upper right side of an individual’s abdomen, below the diaphragm, and above the stomach, right kidney, and intestines.
A person’s spleen is located on the upper left side of an individual’s abdomen next to the stomach and is much smaller than the liver.
Shaknovsky then found the pulsating vessel and fired a staple into it causing it to begin massively bleeding.
Bryan then tragically had a heart attack.
Medical assistants began to suction out blood and perform an emergency blood transfusion to keep him alive.
But Shaknovsky is accused of continuing to keep dissecting Bryan and didn’t ask for help when he removed a 4.6-pound liver.
One staff member said: “The staff looked at the readily identifiable liver on the table and were shocked when Dr. Shaknovsky told them it was the spleen.
“One staff member ‘felt sick to their stomach.”
Bryan died on the table with the official cause of his death given as ‘splenic artery aneurysm’.
Shakvovksy then told staff to label the removed liver as a spleen and send it away for tests.
Staff dutifully followed orders while they felt like the doctor was attempting to convincing something different had occurred.
Shakvovksy is also accused of “egregious conduct of fabricating medical records”.
An autopsy was performed on Bryan after his death.
The autopsy revealed that Bryan’s liver was gone and his spleen was still in his body with a cyst attached to it, Zarzaur said.
“The spleen had a small cyst on it that had some hemorrhage around it, but it was not a fatal issue,” Zarzaur claimed.
“It was a fairly routine-looking cyst. It probably would have been very treatable.”
Meanwhile, Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital has cut all ties with Shaknovsky.
The hospital has removed all photos and references to the doctor from its website, according to Zarzaur.
“We take allegations like this very seriously, and our leadership team is performing a thorough investigation into this event, the hospital said in a previous statement to The U.S. Sun.
“Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast has a longstanding history of providing safe, quality care since the hospital opened its doors in 2003.”
Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast continued that patient safety is most important to them and sent their thoughts and prayers to Bryan’s family.
They declined to comment on “specific patient cases or active litigation.”
This isn’t the first time Shavnovsky has made an error during surgery.
Shavnovsky previously had a “wrong-site surgery” back in 2023 where he reportedly removed a portion of a patient’s pancreas instead of performing the intended adrenal gland resection, Zarzaur claimed.
The case for that surgery was settled privately, according to Zarzaur.
Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital has released a statement after William Bryan died at their hospital during a surgery.
“We take allegations like this very seriously, and our leadership team is performing a thorough investigation into this event.
“Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast has a longstanding history of providing safe, quality care since the hospital opened its doors in 2003.
“Patient safety is and remains our number one priority. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the family.
“We hold the privacy of our patients in the highest regard. We do not comment on specific patient cases or active litigation.”
