Dr Thomas Shaknovsky indicted for second-degree manslaughter after prosecutors allege he removed a patient’s liver instead of his spleen
A former Florida surgeon was indicted by a grand jury after authorities said he removed a man’s liver instead of his spleen.
The Office of the State Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit in Florida announced in a release Monday that Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky was charged with second-degree manslaughter after he allegedly removed the liver from 70-year-old Bill Bryan of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in 2024 during a procedure at Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital in Miramar Beach, Florida.
Prosecutors allege the surgery was scheduled to be a laparoscopic splenectomy, a minimally invasive procedure used to remove the spleen, but the removal of Bryan’s liver resulted in “catastrophic blood loss and the patient’s death on the operating table.”