No Brainer: Two Leading Surgeons Suspended For Abandoning Patient on Operating Table

Brain Surgeons Dr. Thomas Milhorat and Dr. Paolo Bolognese at North Shore University Hospital have been suspended for roughly a month after they abandoned a patient in the operating room after she was anesthetized and prepped for brain surgery.

Milhorat, 73, and Bolognese, 48, head up North Shore’s Chiari Institute, are two of the highest paid doctors in the country. Milhorat made $7.2 million and Bolognese made $2.4 million in 2007.

Bolognese was scheduled for the surgery and was a no show. The nurses looked for him and eventually contacted Milhorat who refused to do the surgery because the patient wasn’t his.

Putting aside the sheer trauma of such negligence for a patient who prepared herself physically and mentally for the operation, anesthesia remains one of the highest risks of surgery.

The two doctors are also facing three malpractice lawsuits alleging that they used patients with the Chiari defect as “guinea pigs for research and financial gain.”

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