Christopher Daniel Duntsch (born April 3, 1971) is a former American neurosurgeon who has been nicknamed Dr. Death for general and gross neurosurgical malpractice while working at hospitals in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. He was accused of injuring 33 out of 38 patients in less than two years, resulting in the maiming of 31 patients and the deaths of 2 others. He was allowed to continue practicing because hospital officials and regulators were incredulous that a surgeon could be incompetent to such an apparent degree. His license was finally revoked by the Texas Medical Board in 2013. In 2017, Duntsch was convicted of maiming one of his patients and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Early life
Christopher Duntsch was born in Montana and spent most of his youth in Memphis, Tennessee. His father, Donald, was a physical therapist and Christian missionary, and his mother, Susan, was a schoolteacher. He was the oldest of four children; he has two brothers, Nathan and Matt, and a sister, Liz. Duntsch is a graduate of Evangelical Christian School in Cordova, Tennessee, where he was a football player.
Duntsch initially attended Millsaps College to play Division III college football, and later transferred to Division I Colorado State University. Former teammates later said Duntsch trained hard but lacked talent. Duntsch returned home to attend Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis). Though he hoped to play football again, Duntsch had exhausted his football eligibility, and decided to switch to a career in medicine. He completed his undergraduate degree at Memphis State in 1995.
Medical training After graduating from Memphis State, he continued on to an MD–PhD program at the University of Tennessee at Memphis College of Medicine, earning degrees in 2001 and 2002. In 2010, Duntsch completed the MD–PhD and neurosurgery residency programs at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and then a spine fellowship program at the Semmes-Murphey Clinic in Memphis.
Duntsch participated in fewer than 100 surgeries during his residency and fellowship; neurosurgery residents typically participate in over 1,000 surgeries. He was suspected of being under the influence of cocaine while operating during his fourth year of residency training. He was sent to a program for impaired physicians for several months before being allowed to return to the residency. Duntsch's supervisors were concerned enough that they did not allow him to operate without direct supervision. Several of Duntsch's friends recalled him going to work after a night of doing drugs, with one saying he would never allow Duntsch to operate on him.
A regular in Memphis strip clubs, Duntsch came to the attention of exotic dancer Wendy Renee Young. In 2011, Young approached Duntsch at a club upon noticing that "all the [other] girls were over there", making her aware that he was a doctor and that "of course, that’s where you're going to go for money". She immediately moved in with him. They had two sons together, and broke up just before the birth of their second son in September 2014.
Career Initially, Duntsch focused heavily on the PhD half of his degree. His name appeared on several papers and patents, and he took part in a number of biotech startups. However, by the time he met Young, Duntsch was over $500,000 in debt. He decided to turn to neurosurgery, which can be a lucrative field. In 2010, Duntsch moved to Dallas, Texas. He persuaded Young to come with him since she grew up in the Dallas area.
Duntsch appeared extremely qualified on paper: he had spent fifteen years in training (medical school, residency and fellowship), and his curriculum vitae was twelve single-spaced pages. Duntsch also falsely claimed to have graduated magna cum laude from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital with a doctorate in microbiology – a program the hospital did not offer when he allegedly attended. Duntsch soon joined Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano (now Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Plano) as a minimally invasive spine surgeon with a salary of $600,000 per year plus bonuses.
Baylor Plano Early in his tenure at Baylor Plano, Duntsch made a poor impression on his fellow surgeons. Veteran vascular surgeon Randall Kirby recalled that Duntsch frequently boasted about his abilities despite being new to the area. He also recalled that Duntsch's skills in the operating room left much to be desired; as Kirby put it, "he could not wield a scalpel".
Several of Duntsch's surgeries at Baylor Plano resulted in severely maimed patients: Kenneth Fennell, the first patient Duntsch operated on at Baylor Plano, was left with chronic pain after Duntsch operated on the wrong part of his back. Fennell later had a second operation by Duntsch to relieve it and was left paralyzed in his legs. Fennell required months of rehabilitation to walk with a cane and was left unable to walk over thirty feet or stand for more than a few minutes. Lee Passmore, a Collin County medical investigator, experienced chronic pain and limited mobility after Duntsch cut a ligament not normally touched during that particular procedure, misplaced hardware in his spine, incorrectly located a screw used to keep the hardware in place, and stripped its threads so it could not be removed. Even if Duntsch had not stripped the threads, he placed the screw in a location that would have caused Passmore to bleed out if it had been removed. Vascular surgeon Mark Hoyle, who assisted with the operation, later recalled that Duntsch seemed oblivious to considerable bleeding. Hoyle became so disturbed by Duntsch's actions that at one point he physically restrained him, and later told Duntsch to his face that he was dangerous. Duntsch's behavior led Hoyle to question his sanity. Barry Morguloff, the owner of a pool service company, was left with bone fragments in his spinal canal after Duntsch tried to pull a damaged disc out of his back with a grabbing tool. Duntsch initially refused to give Morguloff any pain medication, claiming he was a "drug seeker." Morguloff eventually lost most function on his left side and required a wheelchair. Kirby assisted with the surgery and recalled that Duntsch continued making mistakes even after having the correct anatomy pointed out to him. Morguloff later recalled that he walked out on a follow-up visit with Duntsch when he displayed clear signs of being inebriated. Jerry Summers, a longtime friend of Duntsch, came to Baylor Plano to have two neck vertebrae fused. During the operation, Duntsch botched the removal of a disk, rendering Summers a quadriplegic. He performed a second surgery and packed the space with a large amount of gel foam, constricting the spinal cord. The anesthesiologist who worked on the surgery recalled that Summers lost almost 1,200 milliliters of blood, more than a fifth of his blood volume and almost twenty-four times the typical amount lost in a spinal fusion. The nurses and other staffers who took part in the surgery expected Summers to have revision surgery, but Duntsch refused to do it. Summers later stated that he and Duntsch used cocaine the night before his surgery. Although he passed a drug test, Baylor Plano officials were concerned enough to force Duntsch on leave pending a peer review. While Duntsch was cleared to resume operating while the review was underway, hospital officials requested he limit himself to minor surgeries until it was complete. Summers then admitted the cocaine claim was untrue and said he made it up after being upset that Duntsch refused to check on him. Summers remained a quadriplegic and died in 2021 of an infection related to complications from Duntsch's operation. Kellie Martin was undergoing a routine decompression operation—the simplest type of spine surgery— when Duntsch cut through her spinal cord and severed an artery. He continued operating despite clear signs that Martin was losing a large volume of blood, over warnings by a trauma surgeon colleague and anesthesiologist. Duntsch refused to acknowledge anything was wrong, hindering the ICU team's efforts to save Martin. When she awoke from anesthesia, she was screaming and clawing at her legs, forcing the ICU team to re-anesthetize her. Duntsch also stayed out in the ICU waiting room writing notes rather than attending his patient, even after Martin went into hemorrhagic cardiac arrest. Martin ultimately bled to death.
Baylor Plano officials found that Duntsch failed to meet their standards of care and permanently revoked his surgical privileges. The hospital initiated another peer review, but Duntsch resigned rather than face certain termination. To avoid the costs of fighting and possibly losing a wrongful termination suit, as well as possible patient lawsuits for Duntsch's botched surgeries, Baylor Plano officials agreed with Duntsch's lawyers that he could resign in return for the hospital issuing a letter stating that there were no issues with him. Had Duntsch been fired, Baylor Plano would have been required to report him to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), which is intended to flag problematic physicians.
Dallas Medical Center Duntsch moved to the Dallas Medical Center in Farmers Branch, where he was granted temporary privileges until hospital officials could obtain his records from Baylor Plano. Red flags surfaced early on, as nurses wondered if he was under the influence of drugs while on call. For instance, Duntsch came to work wearing the same tattered scrubs for three days in a row. He lasted for less than a week before administrators pulled his privileges after the death of a patient, Floella Brown, and the maiming of another, Mary Efurd.
Duntsch had severed Brown's vertebral artery and refused to abort the surgery despite massive blood loss. He then packed it with too much of a substance intended to stop the bleeding. Brown suffered a stroke as a result. Duntsch did not respond to messages from the hospital for a few hours, then the next day scheduled an elective surgery on Efurd rather than care for Brown. Hospital officials were exasperated when Duntsch refused to delay Efurd's surgery, and asked him multiple times to care for Brown or transfer her out of his care. Duntsch suggested he perform a craniotomy on Brown to relieve the pressure. Hospital officials refused to allow it; not only was Duntsch unqualified for brain surgery, but Dallas Medical Center did not have the equipment or personnel for such an operation. Brown was left in a coma for hours, and was brain dead by the time Duntsch finally acquiesced to her transfer.
While performing a spinal fusion on Efurd, Duntsch severed one of her nerve roots while operating on the wrong portion of her back, twisted a screw into another nerve, left screw holes on the opposite side of her spine, failed to remove the disc he was supposed to remove, and left surgical hardware in her muscle tissue so loose that it moved when touched. Despite several warnings from his colleagues that he was not doing the surgery correctly and was attempting to put screws into muscle rather than bone, Duntsch persisted. Efurd was left paralyzed. She later recalled waking up feeling "excruciating pain" of "ten-plus" on a scale of one to ten. Several people in the operating room for Efurd's surgery suspected Duntsch might have been intoxicated, recalling that his pupils were constricted.