A Texas anaesthesiologist has been sentenced to 190 years in prison for injecting a nerve-blocking agent and other drugs into bags of intravenous fluid at a surgical centre where he worked, resulting in the death of a colleague and causing cardiac emergencies for several patients.
The emergencies began two days after Raynaldo Ortiz Jnr, MD, was notified of a disciplinary inquiry into an incident during which he allegedly “deviated from the standard of care during an anaesthesia procedure” when a patient experienced a medical emergency.
Medpage Today reports that Ortiz, who had a history of disciplinary actions against him, complained to other physicians that the centre was trying to “crucify” him.
Court documents show that Ortiz, who was arrested in September 2022 and convicted in April this year, waived his appearance at sentencing in federal court.
Prosecutors said numerous patients at Surgicare North Dallas suffered cardiac emergencies during routine medical procedures performed by various doctors from May until August in 2022.
Another anaesthesiologist who had worked there died while treating herself for dehydration using an IV bag from the facility, prosecutors said.
The surgical centre staff concluded that these cases suggested a pattern of intentional adulteration of IV bags.
They identified 10 additional unexpected cardiac emergencies that occurred during otherwise unremarkable surgeries in the months before his arrest, which was an exceptionally high rate of complications over such a short period, according to the complaint.
Ortez had his medical licence suspended after his arrest by the Texas Medical Board.
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