When misconduct strikes in scientific research, it triggers a domino effect of ruined reputations, compromised integrity, and shattered public trust in science. But when it happens in medical practice, the consequences are far graver: real human pain, suffering, and death. In the summer of 2024, Beverly and William Bryan would arrive in Florida together to visit family. But only one of them would return home from the trip. In a nightmare turn of events on an operating table in Ascension Heart Sacred Emerald Coast hospital, William Bryan would die from severe hemorrhaging and cardiac arrest during a splenectomy procedure. Most shocking, the autopsy report would note that the patient’s spleen was completely intact. It would also show that the patient had a severed inferior vena cava—the vein connecting the liver to the heart—and a missing liver.
What is truly sickening is that, during the procedure, the surgeon, Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky, would look at the “readily identifiable” liver on the table—according to witnesses in the operating room—and repeatedly call it a spleen. Worse still, he instructed that it be labeled as a spleen before being sent to pathology.
Having hired lawyer Joe Zarzaur, now-widowed Beverly Bryan seeks both civil and criminal proceedings in this case. A news report on the Zarzaur Law, P.A. website provides the entire 47-page Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) investigation report, but I will share some of the key points below.