Florida surgeon charged after removing man’s liver instead of his spleen says he was ‘too upset’ to notice the difference

A Florida court hosted an eight-hour deposition where surgeon Thomas Shaknovsky was put to task about operating on the wrong organ. The case was more concerned with why than how — and despite the deposition lasting a full workday, Shaknovsky’s answers didn’t make for a very convincing justification.

According to NBC News, in Aug. 2024, Shaknovsky made the grave surgical error of removing a man’s liver instead of his spleen. The latest in a string of botched surgeries that have captured national attention ended in the death of Shaknovsky’s patient, William Bryan, who was 70 at the time. His death on Shaknovsky’s operating table led to a lawsuit by Bryan’s widow — and last month the doctor was indicted on a manslaughter charge.

Shaknovsky pleaded not guilty, so the defense team had the arduous task of actually finding an explanation for why a veteran surgeon would remove the wrong organ from a patient. In Nov. 2025, Shaknovsky already held a memorable and emotional deposition where he essentially distilled the mistake down to “unusual factors” that made Bryan’s procedure more complex than what he was used to.

Healthcare in the United States is currently at a very awkward place in history. There is a weight to the wrong moves of top decision-makers in the industry — from policymakers to even insurance company executives — that has recently landed squarely on patients in ways that cannot be ignored. This has in turn caused a huge mistrust of healthcare practitioners that is not good for anyone.

According to Dr. Shaknovsky, the wrong-site surgery happened because Bryan unexpectedly started bleeding profusely during the operation. In the deposition, the surgeon explained that the bleeding caused his patient’s heart to stop. And as the team started performing chest compressions to resuscitate Bryan, coupled with the blood and Shaknovsky not knowing the exact source of the bleeding, he accidentally removed his patient’s liver instead of his spleen.

Shaknovsky said, “I can’t explain to you what it’s like for a surgeon to lose a patient on a table and how demoralizing it is and how devastating it is. And I couldn’t tell the difference because I was so upset.”

A medical examiner determined that Bryan died from bleeding to death and the “surgical removal of the liver.” Prosecutors are still yet to determine the exact timeline of Bryan’s death on the operating table, which will probably be the main grounds for Shaknovsky’s verdict.

Bryan was a veteran who resided in Alabama. He was in Florida with his wife when he suddenly started experiencing pain on the left side of his abdomen. The couple went to Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast to seek medical assistance. That’s where Shaknovsky personally convinced them to proceed with a splenectomy, and despite the couple preferring to return to Alabama, the accused surgeon convinced the elderly couple that it was an emergency.

Shaknovsky described the surgery in vivid terms during the deposition. He said, “It was like an overflowing sink that’s clogged up, and I am looking for a fork at the bottom, trying to feel and find the bleed, and I was not able to do so.” Shaknovsky continued, “After 20 minutes of struggling, desperately trying to save his life, that’s when the wrong-site event took place.”