Florida surgeon who removed wrong organ says he is ‘forever traumatized’

Thomas Shaknovsky said in a deposition in November that he believed he was removing 70-year-old William Bryan’s spleen, not his liver.

Over the course of an eight-hour deposition, Florida surgeon Thomas Shaknovsky faced the same question again and again: Why did he remove a man’s liver instead of his spleen?

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

The disastrous August 2024 surgical error and death of Shaknovsky’s patient, 70-year-old William Bryan, on the operating table prompted Bryan’s widow to file a lawsuit last year and a grand jury to indict Shaknovsky on a manslaughter charge last month. He has pleaded not guilty.

Exactly what went wrong during the planned splenectomy has remained a mystery — especially since Shaknovsky has not spoken publicly about the case.