Doctors Say Shoemaker X-Rays Were Inadequate

Staff members of the radiology department at Glendora Community Hospital testified Monday that Bill Shoemaker’s emergency-room X-rays didn’t cover the lower part of his cervical spine and that there were no side supports for his head while the X-rays were being taken.

Luz Elizaga, a technologist for the hospital that Shoemaker is suing, said that supportive sandbags were removed before she took several pictures of much of the former jockey’s body with a portable X-ray unit.

Elizaga also said that she required help, but she couldn’t remember from whom, in lifting Shoemaker’s body to insert X-ray cassettes under his back.

In earlier testimony Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Donald Shapiro, chief of staff and radiologist at the hospital, said that the first spinal X-rays of Shoemaker after his near-fatal sports-utility vehicle accident did not include the seventh and lowest cervical vertebra, which partly controls movement of the upper body.

Shoemaker, a quadriplegic since the single-vehicle accident, is suing six doctors besides Shapiro, claiming that poor treatment at the hospital exacerbated his condition.

Dr. Celedonio Fernando, who testified last week, also said that Shoemaker’s first X-rays were inadequate. Fernando, a neurosurgeon, is one of the defendants.