NEWARK - A physician who removed portions of the wrong lung during surgery has had his license suspended, after a court denied his application to stay the suspension order issued earlier this month by the State Board of Medical Examiners (BME).

The BME issued its Final Order on June 5, 2008, that suspended the license of Santusht Perera, M.D. for two years, with a minimum of six months of active suspension. The Board found that Perera removed portions of a patient's right lung when the surgeon was attempting to remove a tumor located in the patient's left lung.

Perera appealed the BME's order of suspension to the Appellate Division. In a decision dated June 12, 2008, the court refused to stay the Board's order of suspension.

“The Board's order of license suspension is appropriate given the facts in this matter,” Attorney General Anne Milgram said.

The Appellate Division found there was no basis for a stay given “the seriousness of the offense, the obvious danger posed to the public by the doctor's continued practice at this time, and the lack of any substantial basis for believing that the decision of the Board will be overturned on appeal.”

In its order, the BME stated that “the tragic error which occurred in this case thus could have been prevented had Dr. Perera simply engaged in the most basic and minimal of actions that should be taken by a surgeon in advance of surgery, and we find his failure to have taken those basic actions unquestionably constituted gross negligence.”

The BME also found that Perera engaged in deceit to conceal his error. Perera told the patient after the surgery that the right lung tissue that was removed in error contained a life-threatening tumor even though Perera knew there was no such tumor. Perera also altered his office records to show that he intended to operate on the right lung, when he was really trying to remove the tumor that was in the left lung.

“As horrific as the removal of the wrong lung is, the attempted deceit is disturbing in and of itself. Patient's must have trust in their physicians and Perera obviously violated that trust,” said David Szuchman, Consumer Affairs Director.

The BME assessed a civil penalty of $30,000 and imposed reimbursement of costs for $51,273.10.

Perera's license suspension began on June 6, 2008.

Perera practices at Hoboken University Medical Center and resides in Kinnelon, New Jersey.

Deputy Attorney General Kevin Jespersen represented the state in this matter.

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