On Dec. 8, 2001, the AANS Board of Directors unanimously approved the recommendation of the Professional Conduct Committee that a Florida neurosurgeon’s membership in the AANS be suspended for six months as a result of his unprofessional conduct while testifying as a plaintiff’s expert in a medical malpractice case.
In the underlying litigation a neurosurgeon performed a right L3-4 lumbar exploration, nerve root decompression and a discectomy on a patient who went into shock and died as a result of aortic injury. The Florida neurosurgeon testified that such an injury is always the result of surgical negligence. The defense experts testified that, although infrequent, great vessel injury has long been recognized as a serious and potentially fatal risk of posterior discectomy, that this has occurred to very experienced and careful neurosurgeons, and that it does not by itself indicate that the surgeon was negligent. There were two trials, both ending in defense verdicts.
The Professional Conduct Committee found, and the Board of Directors concurred, that while great vessel injury in the course of discectomy is regarded by some neurosurgeons as necessarily the result of negligence by the operating surgeon, others maintain that this injury can occur in the absence of any negligence and that something more than the injury itself was needed to establish negligence. The committee concluded that at whatever point any particular neurosurgeon’s opinion may lie on the spectrum of opinions, the AANS Expert Witness Guidelines and Position Statement require that this range of opinion be recognized, which the respondent neurosurgeon refused to do. Indeed, in the trial, he denied knowledge of any neurosurgeon holding a contrary opinion to the one he expressed. He also admitted in the hearing that he did not review past or current literature on the subject of his testimony in the trial. The Professional Conduct Committee found this to be in violation of the AANS’ Expert Witness Guidelines.
In addition the committee found and the board concurred that the respondent neurosurgeon engaged in inappropriate advocacy during the trial and repeatedly gave non-responsive or marginally responsive answers to legitimate questions raised by the defense counsel.
For all those reasons the committee and the board found that the neurosurgeon testified inappropriately and unprofessionally and that his membership in the AANS should be suspended for six months.
Editorial Note: In November 2001 the AANS Board of Directors approved a resolution to report in the Bulletin the names of members sanctioned as a result of complaints heard after Jan. 1, 2002. Because the complaint against the Florida neurosurgeon was heard before that time, his name is withheld from this notice.