this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
351 points (98.9% liked)

Not The Onion

21458 readers
1508 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, ableist, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
kescusay@lemmy.world
351
Florida surgeon ‘devastated’ over death of patient after removing liver instead of spleen (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) by FTonsilStones@lemmy.ca to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
92 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Thomas Shaknovsky botched the surgery of William Bryan, 70, who died on the operating table

According to Shaknovksy’s deposition, after removing Bryan’s liver, the surgeon instructed a nurse to label the organ as a “spleen” – and he also identified it as a spleen in Bryan’s postoperative notes. Shaknovsky later said he had been “mentally compromised” at the time of Bryan’s death, explaining that he was “devastated, demoralized, crying over his passing, felt that I failed him”.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] glibg@lemmy.ca 5 points 32 minutes ago

That surgeon has some spleening to do...

[–] dditty@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 23 minutes ago

I bet he feels absolutely gutted

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 37 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Though this was an idiocity, I think we need to be careful with just blaming the surgeon and that's it.

Errors like this usually happen because of a chain of various circumstances and other little mistakes, like with airplane crashes.

I think it would be much better that we treat these sort of incidents like airplane crashes. Investigate everything that went wrong, all causes, without focussing on guilt during the investigation. Guilt can be determined from the results of that, but primarily I want that we get data on how this happened in the first place, and what we can do to avoid this from happening again. This strategy was highly successful in aviation, I'd like to see that applied here too because too much shit still goes too much wrong in healthcare

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 minutes ago

Yeah there's a reason they have kinda long checklists when doing operations.

People have had the wrong leg cut off etc. Although that's perhaps a more understandably a bureaucratic mistake instead of a surgeon mistaking a liver for a spleen. But granted, I've never cut into the human body so even though they're pretty distinct in graphics, once covered in blood and whatnot they might not look so different. Idk. But I think he should have.

[–] modus@lemmy.world 17 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's been a while since I've operated on anyone (consentually, at least). I know some doctors can be so arrogant that you don't ever want to second-guess them or correct them for fear of bring berated. Aren't there other people directly over the patient who might butt in and say "hey, are you sure that's the right part?"

[–] WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I soooo wanna know about the implied non-consensual operations...

[–] pleaseletmein@lemmy.zip 3 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)

It’s the doctor from The Human Centipede.

[–] kazerniel@lemmy.world 31 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

because most commenters here only seem to be reading the headline: according to the surgeon, the patient started heavily bleeding first, and as he was trying to find/stop the bleeding, that's when the mixup happened:

Shaknovsky’s deposition testimony described the chaos in the operating room after Bryan began bleeding extensively, causing his heart to stop. Medical staff performed chest compressions, and Shaknovsky attempted to find where the bleeding was coming from.

“I couldn’t tell the difference because I was so upset,” he said, referring to the organ he mistakenly identified.

“It was like a overflown sink that’s clogged up, and I am looking for a fork at the bottom, trying to feel and find the bleed, and I was not able to do so,” Shaknovsky said. He added: “After 20 minutes of struggling – desperately trying – to save his life, that’s when the wrong-site event took place.

As to why he didn't notice the obviously wrong size of the organ:

Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, Shaknovsky said he believed Bryan’s spleen was “double the size of what is normal” because of a mass on it. Beverly Bryan’s lawsuit, however, states that a medical examiner told her that her husband’s spleen was anatomically “nearly normal”, according to NBC.

edit: more context in this comment: https://lemmy.world/post/46739636/23694470

[–] BygoneNeutrino@lemmy.world 2 points 29 minutes ago* (last edited 28 minutes ago) (1 children)

... comparing this surgeon's patient survival rate to that of other surgeons should determine whether he is to blame.

If his patients are significantly more likely to die than on average, it is probably the surgeon's fault. If he has a pristine record, on the other hand, it was probably beyond his control.

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 3 points 17 minutes ago (1 children)

That would go poorly if he tends to operate on riskier patients. Would definitely have to compare with other surgeons that have a similar patient risk.

[–] BygoneNeutrino@lemmy.world 2 points 9 minutes ago

Absolutely. A good study would account for confounding variables. Even the best surgeons make mistakes that lead to death; they are only human.

...society doesn't want to create a situation where surgeons refuse to operate for fear of making a mistake.

[–] simulacra_procession@lemmy.today 13 points 7 hours ago

"We accidentally replaced your heart with a baked potato. You have about 10 seconds to live."

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 19 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

[–] npcknapsack@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

Americans should be so lucky!

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 6 hours ago

I wonder if the surgeon has dementia

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Okay I'm so sleepy. I forgot what that grey bit in the middle of the liver is.

[–] tackleberry@thelemmy.club 2 points 5 hours ago

This has got to be from The Onion

[–] mystrawberrymind@piefed.ca 37 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

Ok that’s insane, was he drunk or something? But mainly I wanna know what the surg techs and nurses were thinking. Like, wouldn’t you see he was working on the wrong side of the abdomen? Investigate everyone in that operating room IMO

[–] kazerniel@lemmy.world 10 points 6 hours ago

Like, wouldn’t you see he was working on the wrong side of the abdomen? Investigate everyone in that operating room IMO

According to the article the patient was actively bleeding to death at the time, so he (and everyone else) was frantically trying to save his life:

“It was like a overflown sink that’s clogged up, and I am looking for a fork at the bottom, trying to feel and find the bleed, and I was not able to do so,” Shaknovsky said. He added: “After 20 minutes of struggling – desperately trying – to save his life, that’s when the wrong-site event took place.

[–] SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 37 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

There was a post about this case a month or two ago on Lemmy. I can’t find the link right now, I’m sorry. But in there, someone had posted a link to the case files for the court. You could see summaries of testimony from multiple nurses and scrub techs. The short version was that many of them had strong reservations about the surgeon prior to this case due to other errors. When this case happened, they were all pretty certain it was not the spleen immediately.

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 9 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

Did nobody try to stop him?

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

do that and you lose your job. Surgeons are infamous vindictive cunts.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I would be willing to lose my job it it meant saving someones life

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

My dude, I run into people who wanted to have that "I'm willing to lose my job over this" fight in the hospital a few times over something that would kill me. And they were on the killing me side. And I know they were willing to take it to losing their job because they did.

[–] SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I’m not sure if you mean this generally before the case happened, or if you meant, did nobody try to stop him during the case?

I think before the case, there were a lot of people who were uneasy with him because of the types of mistakes he was making, although these were generally smaller, less serious mistakes. I think there had been some scrutiny of his practice, but I don’t recall the details.

During the case, it sounded like there was a complication with bleeding which partially obscured visibility in the operative field. The people in the room knew that the case was not going well because of the bleeding, but it wasn’t until he actually pulled the liver out of the patient that anyone realized how wrong things had gone.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Surgeon removes wrong leg.

Surgeon removes healthy legs.

Different surgeon removes wrong leg.

in every case, there was a team of people in the surgery.

[–] SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Yes there’s always a team in the room. I was only stating that in this case it seemed like from the court summary, the other team members knew there was a problem with bleeding but were unaware he was resecting the liver until he pulled it out of the patient. It sounded like because of the excessive blood they simply couldn’t see well.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 17 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Masses of Human: Spleen 30-230 g Liver avg. 1.5 kg male, and 1.2 kg female

smh

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 minutes ago

Just being a devil's advocate here. If they are removing the spleen, it's probably because there is something wrong with the spleen.

And I've seen splenomegaly cases where the spleen is bigger than the liver. Like almost twice as big.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Seriously.

Also, left and right. Like they shift a bit but not that much. My spleen got lost too (radiology, not surgery, longer story involving indium than I want to tell in text) but if you think a liver is an inflamed spleen you better have identified that the inflamed spleen is the size of a liver first.

Also don't they have a different number of tubes coming offa them? This is not my area of anatomy specialty.

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 3 points 3 hours ago

Different in so many ways, it's criminal.

[–] brax@sh.itjust.works 46 points 12 hours ago

Trump is probably getting the papers ready for the new general surgeon he just found

[–] bampop@lemmy.world 37 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

"felt that I failed him”

Aww don't be too hard on yourself.

He was devastated, but not as devastated as the guy on the operating table.

[–] belunos@lemmus.org 1 points 1 hour ago

I read that and thought "dude, you DID fail him"

load more comments
view more: next ›