A Tampa surgeon who has been widely vilified and ridiculed for mistakenly amputating the wrong leg of a patient on Feb. 20 sought this week to regain both his license to practice medicine and a measure of his once-solid reputation.
In a three-day hearing before the state official who will make recommendations on his professional future, the surgeon, Dr. Rolando Sanchez, and his lawyer, Michael Blazicek, publicly presented their side of the story for the first time.They said that a series of errors by other hospital personnel and the severely diseased condition of both legs led Sanchez to believe that he was operating on the correct leg.
The blackboard to which surgeons refer in the operating room at University Community Hospital in Tampa listed the wrong leg for amputation, as did the operating room schedule and the hospital computer system, testimony revealed.
By the time Sanchez entered the operating room, the wrong leg had been sterilized and draped for surgery.
Some doctors who appeared as witnesses said that the leg Sanchez removed was in such poor shape that it would probably have been amputated in the future.
"It is my opinion that 50 - no, probably 90 percent - of the surgeons in this state would have made the same mistake," said Dr. Joseph Diaco, an expert witness for the defense who is a surgeon and teacher at the University of South Florida. Even a witness for the state suggested it was a mistake anyone could have made.
But Steven Rothenburg, the lawyer pressing the case against Sanchez for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, said that the surgeon should have checked other paperwork, including the patient's consent form and medical history, both of which were available in the operating room.
"Isn't it true," he asked Diaco, "that Dr. Sanchez had the last clear chance before he picked up that knife and cut into that tissue" to make certain the correct leg was being removed?
Diaco said it was true.
Sanchez testified that he learned of his error from a nurse as he was still cutting through King's leg. After reviewing the patient's file, she had started to shake and cry. But by that point, he said, there was no turning back. "I tried to recover from the sinking feeling I had," he testified, as his eyes grew moist and his voice trailed off.