Doctor defends against malpractice claim, says suit wrongfully branded him ‘Dr. Death 2.0’

Dr. Anil Kesani was celebrating his anniversary in Hawaii in 2019 with his wife when the calls from patients started.

People who had just received spinal surgery from Kesani in Dallas-Fort Worth saw multiple news articles about a lawsuit filed against him alleging medical malpractice. The patients were all doing fine, Kesani said, but the reports scared them.

Kesani was confused, but he reassured his patients their recoveries were going well and told them to get second opinions with other doctors if that helped. He soon found out the reason for their anxiety — one of Kesani’s patients had filed a lawsuit against him alleging he had botched her spinal surgery in 2017, lied about it and caused her debilitating, permanent damage.

Kesani’s lawyer initially advised him not to comment on the suit. Medical providers — bound by privacy laws — usually do not comment on patients’ care, especially when litigation is involved. But three years after the suit was filed against him, Kesani said the media reports and court case are still impacting his practice, as well as the life and careers of his family members. He and his wife, Shaily Kesani, decided to speak out about what they say are inconsistencies and lies in the allegations made against Anil Kesani.

“I am 100% honest with my patients, I am transparent with them, I truly care about their well being,” Anil Kesani said. “What Ms. Swanson has done is portrayed me as being dishonest, nontransparent and reckless. Which is not the case at all.”

The case is set to go to trial in October.

The surgery

Lesa Swanson sued Kesani in April 2019 after a spinal surgery at Baylor Medical Center in Trophy Club. In the suit, which was filed in Tarrant County and is still ongoing, Swanson said Kesani misplaced four of six screws in her back during a surgery.

According to the lawsuit, three of the screws went directly into Swanson’s spinal nerves. After the surgery, Swanson said she woke up with severe pain, according to the suit, and x-ray images of Swanson’s spine showed the screws were severely, incorrectly positioned.

Swanson alleges Kesani did not tell her the screws were misplaced and lied about the complication. She went back into surgery on April 28 — the day after the first surgery — and the screws were replaced. After the surgery, another CT scan showed bone debris in Swanson’s back, but Kesani ignored it, the suit says.

While Anil Kesani said the screws were misplaced in Swanson’s initial surgery, the error is a common complication that was immediately recognized and corrected within 24 hours, he said. The follow-up surgery went well, and Swanson would not have been left with permanent damage, Anil Kesani said.

Swanson’s suit alleges she had continued symptoms after the second surgery. Her suit says that as of 2019, she still could not feel her right foot, her right calf or part of her right thigh at all, and she could not stand on her right foot alone without falling. She is seeking damages over $1 million in the suit, saying she cannot work, travel or live as she did before the surgery.

Casey Campbell, Kesani’s attorney, said he believes Swanson took advantage of the initial complication from the surgery and decided to sue Kesani for personal gain.

The lawsuit

According to court documents filed by Swanson’s attorney, Todd Smith, Swanson was not able to return to work because of “Dr. Kesani’s negligence and Mrs. Swanson’s subsequent pain and multiple disabilities.” According to a letter from Smith — which demanded a settlement of over $1 million in the suit — Swanson cannot stand for long periods of time, travel on airplanes, lift heavy objects or climb stairs.

However, Campbell said Swanson has flown on a plane at least 17 times since her surgery in 2017, and initially lied about taking those flights when Campbell interviewed her in her deposition for the case. For example, according to Swanson’s deposition — a copy of which was provided to the Star-Telegram — Swanson initially told Campbell she had not been to Florida after her surgery. However, a few minutes later, Swanson admitted she had flown to Florida for her birthday.

Campbell said his defense team obtained surveillance footage that shows Swanson doing many of the activities she claims she cannot, such as driving long distances, working and carrying heavy objects. Campbell said those videos will be shown at trial.

Swanson also resigned from her position before the surgery happened, according to her deposition, saying she chose to resign beforehand because she did not know whether she would be able to climb the stairs at her job post-surgery.

“She is in much better shape after Kesani’s surgery than she was in before,” Campbell said. “It’s frustrating she got the outcome she wanted, and she is still suing because there was this complication that Dr. Kesani corrected.”

Swanson had a long medical history of lower back and right leg pain long before the spinal surgery with Kesani, according to an orthopedic surgeon who is set to appear as an expert witness in the case. The expert witness, Bernie McCaskill, reviewed Swanson’s medical records at the request of Kesani’s attorney and noted, for example, that Swanson saw a doctor about numbness and pain in her back in 2015 — two years before the spinal surgery.

Impact

Shaily Kesani, who is a dermatologist, said the lawsuit against her husband affected their family and patients. Her husband was denied a mortgage because of the pending litigation and she had to apply for it instead. Anil Kesani was starting his own practice when the lawsuit was filed, but the office he planned to sublease backed out after the media attention. Fewer patients came to the office, and physicians stopped referring patients to him, Shaily Kesani said.

“The amount of stress it caused on us was inexplicable and trying to raise a young family all while being branded Dr. Death 2.0 is just so devastating,” Shaily Kesani wrote in an email to the Star-Telegram.

She noted that some comments on the initial media reports likened Kesani to a Dallas-based surgeon dubbed “Dr. Death.” That surgeon, Christopher Duntsch, was convicted in 2017 after maiming dozens of patients and killing two, according to D Magazine.

“This is unfortunately a classic case of a patient experiencing a known risk of a medical procedure and is attempting to exploit it as an opportunity for secondary gain,” Anil Kesani said in a statement. “Due to privacy laws, healthcare providers like myself are limited in what can be discussed; however, what is publicly known shows her credibility in this matter is absent.”