Anesthesiologist accused of being a 'medical terrorist' indicted on 10 federal charges

An American anesthesiologist has been indicted on 10 federal charges stemming from the death of a fellow doctor and from several incidents where patients were either seriously injured or suffered complications during surgery under anesthetic. Dr. Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz, Jr.,—who has been labelled a “medical terrorist” by the U.S. Attorney’s office—faces five counts of tampering with consumer products and five counts of adulteration of drugs. Surveillance videos submitted as evidence show Dr. Ortiz on four separate occasions putting an IV bag in an IV bag warmer located in the operating room hallway at Baylor Scott and White Surgicare, a surgical centre in north Dallas, Tx. In one video, according to court documents, Dr. Ortiz passes by the warmer, walks back, puts in an IV and looks around the empty hallway before walking away. In another video, he replaces an IV bag with another one he had hidden behind a paper folder tucked in his arm. Read: Body snatcher: Funeral home owner made over US$1.2M by stealing and selling hundreds of bodies Three of these videotaped events were followed shortly after by in-surgery cardiac emergencies. According to court documents, the warmer is usually restocked in volume by hospital workers and that it’s unusual for doctors to be replenishing the warmer themselves and even more unusual for anyone to be putting in just one bag at a time. The indictments against Dr. Ortiz come about five months after the death of Dr. Melanie Kaspar, a fellow anesthesiologist who worked at Baylor Scott and White. Dr. Kaspar had been feeling ill and self-treated for dehydration with an intravenous bag of saline she had taken home from work. She died immediately after injecting herself with the bag’s contents. Following an autopsy Dr. Kaspar’s death was ruled initially as accidental and attributed to the nerve-blocking agent bupivacaine, which is used commonly in the administration of anesthesia. Read: Coffee, tea or Drano? Dermatologist accused of poisoning her husband However hospital staff grew suspicious when, two months later, an 18-year-old male patient who came in for nose surgery to fix an injury from an accident experienced a cardiac emergency during the procedure. A chemical analysis of the fluid in the IV bag attached to the patient during surgery found epinephrine and lidocaine in addition to bupivacaine. The hospital then looked more deeply into its procedures and found that, between May and August, there were 10 other unexpected cardiac emergencies during surgeries as well as an exceptionally high rate of complications. According to court documents, these in-surgery cardiac emergencies all followed the same pattern, where the patient’s blood pressure spiked to dangerous levels, usually after the placement of additional IV bags. The rate of occurrence was unusually high: in August 2022 alone, the facility had to transfer five surgery patients for emergency treatment. By comparison, in 2021 the facility had the same total number of emergency treatments for the entire year. Read: No joy here: Doctor who spiked female physician's drink with ecstasy loses licence Court documents state that these medical incidents started happening two days after Dr. Ortiz was advised he was the subject of a disciplinary inquiry for allegedly having “deviated from the standard of care” during an anesthesia procedure when a patient experienced a medical emergency. Court documents also allege that the cardiac incidents all happened around the time Dr. Ortiz was working at the surgical centre, but that none of the incidents occurred during his own surgeries. An examination of the hospital’s stock of IV bags found that a number of the bags had small punctures on their outer packaging, and the content of these particular bags had all been tampered with. Dr. Ortiz, who had been in trouble previously with the Texas Medical Board and with other hospitals that had employed him, has denied all allegations and is expected to enter a not guilty plea this week. Read: Ohio doctor found not guilty in 14 hospital patient deaths

Anesthesiologist accused of being a 'medical terrorist' indicted on 10 federal charges

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