A Florida surgeon has had his license suspended after removing a patient's liver instead of his spleen, causing the patient to bleed out and die on the operating table. And now, the man's widow is seeking justice.
Alabama couple Bill Bryan, 70, and his wife Beverly had been visiting their rental property in Destin, FL on Aug. 19 when Bryan began to feel pain on his left side and was admitted to Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast. At the hospital, he was diagnosed by Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky as having an enlarged spleen, who recommended immediate surgery.
"We called Bill’s doctor, here at home in Northwest Alabama and he told Bill that he would have surgeons here in North Alabama waiting when we got home," his wife Beverly told WMBB 13 News . I tried to convince Dr. Shaknovsky to let me take him home, or arrange for him to be transported. But Dr. Shaknovsky said that Bill would bleed to death if he was moved."
However, two days later on Aug. 21, Bryan agreed to allow Shaknovsky perform the surgery. A Florida Department of Health emergency order later described the procedure as a "grievous medical error" and called Shaknovsky "an immediate, serious danger" to the public. He also went to great lengths to lie about his error including falsifying medical records and pressuring witnesses to lie.
Shaknovsky initially claimed that he confused the liver for the enlarged spleen because it had been in an unusual location, despite the two organs being different sizes, colors, and on opposite sides of the body. However, witnesses in the operating room recalled a drastically different recollection of events.
The state order says that Shaknovsky at one point said that he could feel an area he was attempting to cut into as "pulsing under his finger," and described it as "scary" to the staff member assisting him.
After removing the liver, Bryan began to hemorrhage severely and went into cardiac arrest. However, Shaknovsky continued making incisions despite the fact that there was "no visibility" with the heavy bleeding, and not once asked for a clamp or cauterizer. He was also described by witnesses as "blindly" firing a stapling device into Bryan’s abdomen.
According to the order: "The staff looked at the readily-identifiable liver on the table and were shocked when Dr. Shaknovsky told them it was a spleen. One staff member felt sick to their stomach."
After Bryant died, Shaknovsky was said to have attempted to convince witnesses that the cause of death was "ruptured splenic artery aneurysm" and reportedly even requested the liver be labeled a "spleen" when it was sent to pathology. He later continued to lie about what had transpired, claiming that he had operated on specific ligaments and structures that went untouched.
But that allegedly wasn't even Shaknovsky's first serious medical error. In May of 2023, he removed a portion of a patient’s pancreas instead of the adrenal gland, claiming at the time that the gland had "migrated" to a different part of the body.
"Dr. Shaknovsky’s repeated egregious surgical errors resulted in significant patient harm coupled with his failure to take responsibility for these errors indicates that his reckless conduct is likely to continue," the order reads. "Therefore, Dr. Shaknovsky’s continued practice as an osteopathic physician presents an immediate, serious danger to the health, welfare, and safety of the public."
In the wake of her husband's death, Beverly is now pursing both criminal and civil proceedings.
"My husband died while helpless on the operating room table by Dr. Shaknovsky," she said in a statement to Fox News Digital . "I don’t want anyone else to die due to his incompetence at a hospital that should have known or knew he had previously made drastic, life-altering surgical mistakes.
"Everyone knows you can’t live without your liver. It’s about the same thing as if they had pulled out your heart. His heart," she explained to the local news station. “I know I’m not the only wife who’s lost her husband suddenly, but the loss of my Bill was exceptionally unnecessary and brutal.
"We do not want this to happen to anyone else, but for this particular individual especially," she continued. "I didn’t realize it takes so long for a doctor to lose a license. I thought it would be something, you know, as soon as this was known, it would be immediate. That is not the case."
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