Surgeon, VA hospital under fire for OR deaths

[unhappycamper]

Surgeon, VA hospital under fire for OR deaths
By Jim Suhr and Denise Lavoie - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Oct 12, 2007 19:47:24 EDT

MARION, Ill. — Bob Shank was in good spirits as he awaited gallstone-removal surgery at a veterans’ hospital in August, laughing as he handed his wife his false teeth for safekeeping.

If the 50-year-old Air Force veteran had any worries, it was whether his wife would be able to understand the postoperative instructions from his surgeon, Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, a Bolivian-trained physician with a thick accent.

“Pay close attention to what the doctor says, that you’ll understand him,” Shank pressed her as he was wheeled off to the operating room.

They were the last words Katrina Shank ever heard from him. Her husband never woke up from surgery, and by the next day he had bled to death.

Shank, it turns out, was far from the only surgical patient to die under Veizaga-Mendez’s care. Nine veterans — all in some way linked to Veizaga-Mendez, officials say — died in a six-month period ending in March, during which the hospital would have expected only two deaths.

Even before Veizaga-Mendez was hired at the Veterans Administration hospital, he had made payouts in two malpractice suits in Massachusetts and was under investigation there on suspicion of botching seven cases, two of which ended in deaths.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/ap_vet_deaths_071012/