The Surgeon Who Sewed a Sponge-and Kept Operating Anyway

Healthcare Mysteries Uncovered · Oct 17, 2026 · 23m

The Surgeon Who Sewed a Sponge-and Kept Operating Anyway

Danger hides behind credentials: a surgical sponge was sewn into a patient’s throat and the surgeon refused to remove it as sepsis set in, while between 2010 and 2013 thirty-three of thirty-eight spinal surgery patients were left injured, paralyzed, or dead-how did hospitals keep letting him operate?

In this episode, we tell the story of Christopher Duntsch’s time in Dallas, the patients who came for relief and left catastrophically harmed, and the institutional decisions that allowed him to move from OR to OR-what chain of failures let…