Doctor accused of botched surgery admits post-operative report’s untrue — but denies negligence

Fresno surgeon Pervaiz Chaudhry took the stand for the first time in his medical malpractice civil trial Tuesday, where he denied abandoning his patient in the operating room after an open heart surgery in 2012.

In a post-operative report, Chaudhry said his then 70-year-old patient Silvino Perez tolerated his open-heart surgery well and was being transferred to the intensive care unit at Community Regional Medical Center. He dictated the report on April 2, 2012 around 12:15 p.m.

But on Tuesday, Chaudhry admitted in Fresno County Superior Court that his post-operative report for Perez was not true. “It was dictated in anticipation,” Chaudhry told the jury.

Chaudhry is giving his account about what happened during Perez’s surgery that caused him to lose so much blood that his brain was starved of oxygen. Perez subsequently went into a permanent coma.

Perez’s stepson, Cristobal Arteaga, has sued Chaudhry and his Valley Cardiac Surgery Medical Group for negligence. His lawyers have accused the prominent surgeon of leaving the operating room for a business meeting at a northeast Fresno restaurant and ordering his physician assistant to close up Perez’s chest.

Arteaga also sued CRMC for negligence, but the hospital reached a confidential settlement before the trial began.

On Tuesday, Chaudhry denied being negligent. But he admitted that he did not close Perez’s chest. He told the jury that his physician assistant and another surgeon in the operating room closed Perez’s chest.

“I was there,” he told the jury. “It was closed under my supervision.”

But the physician assistant, Bella Albakova, has already testified that Chaudhry left the operating room, leaving her to close the chest. She testified general surgeon, Dr. Kalwant Dhillon, helped her wire Perez’s sternum back together and stitch up fat and muscle tissue, but he had to go somewhere, so she was left alone to stitch the skin.

Chaudhry was on the witness stand for only one hour on Tuesday. He will resume his testimony Wednesday.

But in his short time testifying, he told the jury that Perez was stable and had no surgical bleeding when he left the sterile confines of the operating room shortly before noon.

Supporters describe Chaudhry as a brilliant heart surgeon who performs high-risk surgeries to save lives.

Chaudhry’s lawyer James M. Goodman has told the jury that Chaudhry is not at fault because Perez suffered “an extremely rare complication” during surgery.

Before he went into a coma, Perez, a retired field and packing house worker from Sanger who is now 76, was the primary caretaker for his wife who suffers from symptoms of dementia.

A CRMC record said Perez was “a 70-year-old male with no significant past medical history” who was admitted for intense chest pain. At the time of the surgery, there were several people in the operating room, including Albakova, Dr. Ashwin Bhatt, an anesthesiologist, Dhillon, and three nurses. They were there to replace an aortic heart valve and repair an aortic aneurysm.

Before Chaudhry testified, Adams Yussif, a registered nurse with the California Department of Public Health, testified that three nurses in the operating room told him that Chaudhry left the operating room and that Albakova was in charge of closing Perez’s chest. Yussif was investigating the complaint against Chaudhry for CDPH.

But during trial, the nurses have given a different account or don’t recall if Chaudhry left. To complicate matters, Yussif admitted that he did not tape record the nurses’ statements and he did not interview Chaudhry, Albakova or Dhillon. Yussif said he told hospital officials that he wanted to interview Chaudhry, Albakova or Dhillon, but was told they were not available.

In addition, he didn’t ask the nurses when Perez’s operation started, what time Chaudhry left the operating room or when Perez’s heart stopped from a loss of blood. But he told juror that the three nurses were clear when they told him about two weeks after Perez’s surgery that Chaudhry left the operating room while the patient’s chest was open, and that Albakova closed Perez’s chest.

What is clear so far from Chaudhry’s testimony is that he declared Perez stable with no surgical bleeding, and took Perez off the lung and heart machine at 11:45 a.m.

Chaudhry testified Tuesday he received a text message on his cell phone during surgery. He said that he left the operating room at 11:56 a.m. to reply to the text.

At 12:05 p.m. he wrote on a hospital computer his post-operative orders that medical staff would carry out during Perez’s recovery from surgery, he testified. He then dictated his post-operative report that claimed Perez has tolerated his surgery well. His final entry in the report was at 12:15 p.m.

This story was originally published January 30, 2018 at 7:09 PM with the headline "Doctor accused of botched surgery admits post-operative report’s untrue — but denies negligence."