A surgeon facing manslaughter charges after removing a patient's liver instead of his spleen told investigators he remains haunted by the man's death on the operating table. Thomas Shaknovsky, 44, described the November deposition obtained by NBC as his first detailed account of the 2023 operation that killed William Bryan, 70, and triggered national scrutiny of his medical judgment.
"I'm forever traumatized by it and hurt by it," Shaknovsky said in the deposition. He called the fatal error an "incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply" and suggested wrong-site surgeries can occur "during difficult circumstances."
A grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky in April. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
During the eight-hour deposition, Shaknovsky recounted the chaos that unfolded after Bryan began bleeding catastrophically. He said he instructed a nurse to label the liver as a spleen and identified it that way in the patient's postoperative notes. When asked how he could confuse the two organs, Shaknovsky blamed his emotional state. "I couldn't tell the difference because I was so upset," he said.
The surgeon described frantically searching for the source of bleeding while Bryan's heart stopped. Medical staff performed chest compressions as Shaknovsky desperately tried to save him. "It was like an overflown sink that's clogged up, and I am looking for a fork at the bottom, trying to feel and find the bleed," he said. After 20 minutes of failed resuscitation attempts, he acknowledged the wrong-site event.
Shaknovsky claimed Bryan's spleen was enlarged to roughly double its normal size due to a mass, which he said contributed to his misidentification. Beverly Bryan's lawsuit challenging that assertion cites a medical examiner who told her the spleen was anatomically "nearly normal."
After the team failed to revive Bryan, Shaknovsky said he retreated to the hospital's medical library to cry privately. "I was devastated. I didn't want the staff to see me like that," he explained. He later told the deposition he had been "mentally compromised" and felt he "failed" his patient.
Beverly Bryan's malpractice suit accuses Shaknovsky of deliberately omitting any reference to the liver removal in his notes to "cover up" his gross negligence. The Walton County Sheriff's Office previously stated that Shaknovsky's actions caused "catastrophic blood loss and the patient's death on the operating table."
Author James Rodriguez: "The deposition shows a surgeon consumed by remorse, but Beverly Bryan's lawsuit tells a different story about documentation and intent. Either way, William Bryan went into surgery for a spleen and died because of a catastrophic mistake that should never have happened."
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