Ammon News - 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.

The lawyers also alleged that Shaknovsky “proceeded with labeling the removed liver specimen as a ‘spleen’”, and told Bryan’s wife after the procedure that the “spleen” was so diseased that it was four times bigger than usual, and had migrated to the other side of Bryan’s body.

An “extensive investigation” by the Walton county sheriff’s office, the state attorney for Walton county and state medical authorities followed, Adkinson said.

The sheriff said the grand jury found probable cause that Shaknovsky’s actions in the operating room constituted criminal conduct under Florida law, and returned an indictment for second-degree manslaughter, a second-degree felony.

If found guilty, he faces up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

The Guardian