DALLAS — A Dallas anesthesiologist used to be convicted Friday for injecting a nerve-blocking agent and different medicine into luggage of intravenous fluid at a surgical middle the place he labored, which led to the loss of life of a coworker and brought about cardiac emergencies for a number of sufferers, federal prosecutors stated.
A jury convicted Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr., 60, of 4 counts of tampering with client merchandise ensuing in critical physically damage, one rely of tampering with a client product and 5 counts of intentional adulteration of a drug, prosecutors stated. A sentencing date has now not but been set for Ortiz, who faces up to 190 years in jail.
“Dr. Ortiz cloaked himself in the white coat of a healer, but instead of curing pain, he inflicted it,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Leigha Simonton, stated in a video remark.
Prosecutors stated proof offered at trial confirmed that a lot of sufferers at Surgicare North Dallas suffered cardiac emergencies all through regimen scientific procedures carried out via more than a few medical doctors between May 2022 and August 2022. During that time, an anesthesiologist who had labored on the facility previous that day died whilst treating herself for dehydration the use of an IV bag.
Prosecutors stated Ortiz, who used to be arrested in September 2022, had surreptitiously positioned the contaminated IV luggage right into a warming bin on the facility and waited for them to be used in his colleagues’ surgical procedures.
Evidence offered at trial confirmed that on the time of the emergencies, Ortiz used to be going through disciplinary motion for an alleged scientific mistake made in one in every of his personal surgical procedures, prosecutors stated.