Doctor Left Cutting Tool On in Man’s Spine, Board Says

A Van Nuys orthopedic surgeon has been accused by state medical authorities of leaving a power cutting tool running in a patient’s spinal column while he left the operating room to make a phone call and go to the bathroom.

Dr. Fereydoune Shirazi also operated on other patients’ knees without being able to see what he was doing because he was improperly using an instrument that enables the surgeon to monitor the operating area within the joint on a TV screen, according to the Medical Board of California.

Shirazi denied in an interview that he had done anything improper or that he endangered or injured any of his patients.

Shirazi, 55, could lose his physician’s license if an administrative judge upholds the board’s charges of gross negligence, incompetence and repeated negligent acts.

Les Williams, a supervising investigator for the medical board, said no patients were seriously injured. But, he said, “the potential was there for some very serious . . . harm.”

According to the board, Shirazi left the operating room for 11 minutes, to make a phone call and use the bathroom, in the midst of surgery on a 30-year-old man’s back in 1990 at Westlake Medical Center in Westlake Village.

Shirazi was using a cutting tool called a nucleotome, activated by a foot pedal. When he left the room, he placed a sandbag on the pedal, which kept the tool’s blades rotating in the man’s spine, the board said.

Shirazi, who is certified as an orthopedic surgeon, acknowledged that he “forgot to turn . . . off” the nucleotome. But he added: “A few minutes later, an anesthesiologist, who was standing by, did turn it off.” He said the device is designed only to cut away degenerated spinal disk tissue and cannot cut healthy tissue.

The board also alleged that Shirazi operated “in a blind manner” on three patients’ knees. During such operations, surgical tools are inserted into the knee through one incision. A lens connected to a TV monitor is inserted through another incision so doctors can see where their instruments are, and what they are doing, inside the joint.

The board said Shirazi never managed to get his instruments positioned properly so he could see the operation on the TV screen. That meant he was in danger of removing or damaging tissue he could not see, the board said.

During an operation on the left knee of a 36-year-old man at Simi Valley Hospital in 1991, Shirazi “was essentially lost,” according to the board. The physician “had to be instructed or prompted on numerous occasions, as to where he was within the joint, and had a great deal of difficulty maneuvering the scope,” the board said.

Shirazi’s work was monitored during the operation by a hospital-appointed proctor, Dr. H. William Frank, then chief of surgery at Simi Valley.

Frank, an orthopedist who has since left the hospital staff, said what Shirazi did “was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” and prompted the hospital to suspend his surgical privileges.

Shirazi denied having any trouble with his instruments during the procedure. He blamed his problems with the medical board on Frank, whose report touched off the state investigation.