Florida surgeon indicted after removing liver instead of spleen

Grand jury brings manslaughter charge over fatal 2024 operation where patient died on table A surgeon in Florida has been indicted for manslaughter after he wrongly removed a patient’s liver instead of his spleen during an August 2024 procedure. Thomas Shaknovsky, 44, was indicted by a grand jury in Tallahassee on Monday after prosecutors said he botched the surgery of 70-year-old William Bryan, of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The jury of the first judicial circuit heard that Shaknovsky, of DeFuniak Springs, 120 miles (193km) west of Tallahassee, had been scheduled to perform an operation called a laparoscopic splenectomy on the patient, but instead cut out the man’s liver. The consequence was “catastrophic blood loss and the patient’s death on the operating table”, according to a press release from Michael Adkinson, the Walton county sheriff. Shaknovsky was taken into custody in Miramar Beach, Florida, on Monday morning and taken to the Walton county jail ahead of a scheduled first court appearance on Tuesday, the sheriff said. Court filings, and an emergency order of license suspension by the Florida department of health less than a month after Bryan’s death, detailed how Shaknovsky a