Surgeon Accused of Leaving Tool in Patient’s Spine : Medicine: Board says he also did knee operations without seeing what he was doing. Van Nuys doctor denies all charges.

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 (Fred) Shirazi also operated on other patients’ knees without being able to see what he was doing because he was not properly 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, a native of Iran who attended medical school in Paris, 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. No hearing date has been scheduled.

Les Williams, a supervising investigator for the medical board, said no patients were seriously injured by Shirazi. But he asserted: “Obviously, this guy was being very careless. 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 nucleotome blades rotating in the man’s spine, the board said.

That action exposed the man, who was under local anesthesia, to serious risk of injury, officials said.

Shirazi, who is board-certified as an orthopedic surgeon, acknowledged that he “forgot to turn . . . off” the nucleotome when he left to relieve himself.

But he added: “A few minutes later, an anesthesiologist, who was standing by, did turn it off.” He said that, in any event, 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 other patients’ knees.

During such operations, surgical tools are inserted into the knee through one incision. A telescope-like 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 one such 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 accusation.

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 Shirazi’s alleged ineptness “was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” and prompted the hospital to suspend his surgical privileges.

“That particular problem was one of several problems that we couldn’t allow to continue to happen,” Frank said.

Shirazi denied he had 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 of Shirazi.

“Dr. Frank, personally, he is against me,” Shirazi said. “He believes he’s God. It’s as simple as that. What he’s saying is exaggerated and his opinion.

“I’ve been doing this procedure for more than 10 years,” he said. “How come all of a sudden I don’t know how to do it?”