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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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