A Texan surgeon is going to spend the rest of his life in prison because of his horrific incompetence on the operating table. The almost unbelievable case follows Doctor Christopher Duntsch who managed to maim 32 of his patients. Nicknamed by local newspapers as “Dr. Death,” the criminal conviction shows how a broken system allowed a deranged, drug-addled, and incompetent doctor to harm so many of his patients.
After studying medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Duntsch moved to Dallas where he worked at Minimally Invasive Spine Institute, a $600,000-a-year job that only lasted a couple weeks. After leaving the institute, the deranged doctor moved to Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano. Less than a year into his stint at the prestigious hospital, colleagues begin to describe surgeries gone horrifically wrong. Concerned about excessive blood loss, one surgeon told The Dallas Morning News that he grabbed Duntsch’s medical instruments to stop him from operating. Another doctor described one surgery as “pathetic on what should have been a fairly easy case.”