Medicine: Surgeon in Court

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When surgeons disagree about an operation, or when hospital authorities accuse a surgeon of unprofessional practice, the public ordinarily hears nothing of it. The medical profession has a code of silence that covers nearly all such cases. But last week Pontiac, Mich. (pop. 80,000) was treated to a hair-raising public airing of charges and countercharges exchanged between Pontiac General Hospital and a surgeon recently suspended from its staff. The case badly shook the town's confidence in its appointed healers, and it gave the rest of the U.S. something to think about.

Center of the storm was a 42-year-old Arkansan, Dr. Neil Holland Sullenberger, 1939 graduate of the University of Arkansas' School of Medicine, who began to specialize in surgery as soon as he finished his Army stint. He won certification by the American Board of Surgery, and recognition as a skilled and sometimes daring operator. But Dr. Sullenberger had a knack for not getting along with people. In 1950 he was asked to leave the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor after an assault-and-battery charge against him (the verdict: not guilty). That same year he was asked to leave St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Pontiac "for conduct unbecoming a physician."

Lost: One Sponge. Surgeon Sullenberger took his patients to Pontiac General, stayed for four years, helped to run a training program for younger surgeons. After a Michigan conviction for speeding (more than 100 m.p.h.) he went South, held four hospital appointments from Mississippi to Texas, none for more than five months. Then Dr. Sullenberger returned to Pontiac General, where he was put back on the staff after signing an undated resignation. Within 16 months the hospital's new director, Carl Flath, picked up the resignation. Dr. Sullenberger sued for reinstatement. Then Director Flath loosed his blast. In an answer filed in court, he charged that Surgeon Sullenberger:

¶ Paid no attention to an assistant's warning that a sponge seemed to be missing while he was removing a tumor from a 40-year-old woman. The patient was readmitted with an internal abscess, and died; autopsy indicated that death was caused by the sponge.

¶ Performed "unnecessary and dangerous surgery" (removal of both adrenal glands) on a weakened cancer victim of 67, "resulting in her death."

¶ Operated on a man of 59 for cancer, but detected none. Seeing a severely diseased kidney, he removed this "in an unusual way." Gangrene set in, "the probable result of plaintiff's improper surgical procedure," and the patient died.

¶ Operated for hernia on a girl of three months, although "there was no indication of need for surgery."

¶ Began to fall asleep during surgery, so that a resident had to be summoned from home to finish the operation.

¶ Was involved in 25 incidents (in all) of unprofessional practice, in six of which the patient died. And in several (including appendectomies) there was no evidence that surgery was necessary.