 Ortiz literally shot his neighbor's dog. How has someone that has had this happen to them over and over again still have a license to practice medicine? Like what does it take to lose your license? Welcome back to the channel, everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael, aka Dr. Chalini, and I am a board certified diagnostic and interventional radiologist. Oh, do I have an absolutely crazy story for you coming out of Texas just this past week? It involves an anesthesiologist by the name of Dr. Reynaldo Ortiz, who was suspended by the Texas Medical Board this week until further notice. And I'm not even going to waste any more time here because this story is absolutely insane. And maybe one of the most insane stories I've heard in a long time pertaining to medicine and involving a doctor for that matter. So let's go ahead and get into it. Man, look at this tan, huh? Look good. This red color, pink, mauve, it's mauve color. My tan are enough is enough, let's do it to the video. So just to summarize real quickly, and then we'll get into the nitty-gritty of this case. Well, there's not really a case yet. It's more of just like allegations. So we'll talk about all this and it gets crazy, trust me. So Dr. Ortiz is under a current criminal investigation following serious cardiac complications and even a death of one of his colleagues. And authorities believe that these deaths and these serious cardiac complications are related to IV bags that have been tampered with, allegedly, and this all happened at the Baylor Scott and White Surgeoning Facility in North Dallas, Texas. You know, I always like to look up where the hospital looks like or the surgical center. So let's do that now. I always just like to get a visual of the actual place where this stuff happened so I can kind of, you know, put myself in the environment. And honestly, it just looks like your average surgical center. It honestly looks like a stool. But I digress, let's get back to the story. So Dr. Ortiz is part of this ongoing criminal investigation involving tampered IV bags. And according to the Texas Medical Board, this may have been going on from May of this year through September of this year. Apparently Dr. Ortiz was caught by the hospital surveillance cameras and they showed Dr. Ortiz putting one of these IV bags into the warmers that are located outside of the operating room. And shortly thereafter surveillance caught him putting IV bags in these warmers. A patient had a serious cardiac complication. What exactly was that serious cardiac complication? Well, we don't really know yet. But I'm sure we'll find out more facts on this case as stuff starts popping up. This is still only like a couple of days or maybe a week old at this point. Oh, and for those of you who don't know, IV bags are kept in warmers at surgery centers, basically like little warmer, almost like a little mini fridge, but it's warm inside. You keep the IV bags in there so that you administer warm fluids in the OR so that the patient doesn't get cold. And it keeps their body temperature normal versus administering very cold temperature fluids that can cause the patient's body temperatures to decrease. So that's why we warm up IV bags in the operating room. Well, not we, but anesthesiologists. And if this whole story about anesthesiologists tampering with IV bags isn't crazy enough, the story gets a little crazier now. So I briefly mentioned that one of Dr. Ortiz's anesthesiologist colleagues died and here's the rest of the story behind that. This past June, Dr. Melanie Casper, who is an anesthesiologist that worked with Dr. Ortiz was feeling ill and decided to take home some IV bags in order to self-administer them at home in hopes to rehydrate and feel better. So she grabbed one of the IV bags from the IV bag warmer and took it home. Now, say what you will, she probably shouldn't have taken an IV bag without authorization from the hospital, but that's neither here nor there. So here's what happened when she came home. So she came home, self-administered the intravenous fluids and shortly thereafter suffered cardiac arrest. Originally, her obituary said that she died of a heart attack but later officials determined that the cause of her death was due to bupivocaine toxicity. This prompted further investigation and tested the bags in the IV bag warmer, which showed visible tiny holes within the packages surrounding the IV bags. And if you didn't know, every IV bag comes within its own little special sealed package that's clear and they found holes within the packages, which means they were probably tampered with. And as it turns out, the tampered bags that had holes in them contained bupivocaine, but they weren't labeled as such. Say for instance, you just have a full, warmer full of normal saline IV bags. They would have to be labeled that this one contains a certain percentage of bupivocaine and these bags contain bupivocaine without anybody knowing it. And honestly, who would expect that just grabbing IV bags out of the warmer? So just how did the bupivocaine get into these IV bags? Well, it's still unclear at the moment, but between the surveillance video of Ortiz and the associated complications, there is allegedly a connection between the two. And I know I told you it is an insane story, but let's quickly take a little pin in this story and talk about what bupivocaine is. So what is bupivocaine? Well, bupivocaine is a numbing agent or local anesthetic that we administered during many different procedures and surgeries. I use it pretty frequently to numb up the scan prior to my procedures, not as much as I do, it's causing lidocaine, but I still use it time and time again. And like I said, it's most commonly used to numb up the scan for procedures or surgeries, but you can use it in a number of different applications, such as joint anesthesia, dental work, or other nerve blocks. It is a member of the Amide family of local anesthetics, just like the lidocaine is, but like I said before, bupivocaine lasts longer than lidocaine. Wait, I didn't say that. Well, here I'll say it now. Bupivocaine lasts longer than lidocaine. Just for reference, lidocaine lasts anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes depending on the person, whereas bupivocaine can last up to 72 hours. Not all bupivocaine lasts this long, but there are certain formulations that allow this anesthetic to last that long. And honestly, it's a great medication to prevent pain and even prevent narcotic use after a large surgery. And as far as bupivocaine toxicity dose, the maximum dose or the toxic dose for bupivocaine is around three milligrams per kilogram. And a quick example will show you exactly how fast you can reach that dose. So say you are a 70 kilogram person or 154 pounds, the max allowable subcutaneous dose would be about 28 ccs. And for reference, I use about 10, maybe 20 ccs of lidocaine per procedure. So it's not crazy to reach toxic levels if you're not careful. And since bupivocaine toxicity and other local anesthetics are weight-based, you can see how the pediatric population would only need a fraction of what an adult can tolerate to reach toxic levels. Even just a few ccs can reach a toxic level for some pediatric patients. Furthermore, relating to this story, it's easy to see now that just a small amount of bupivocaine can be injected in these IV bags, which can result in catastrophic effects. And keep in mind, these toxic levels are just us talking about the subcutaneous route. If you administer bupivocaine directly into your bloodstream or intravenously, it can have severe cardio toxic effects and result in acystole, or when your heart completely stops. In most of the time, this toxicity is refractory to resuscitative measures, which means CPR doesn't really work. So now that you've learned everything you need to know about bupivocaine, let's dive into the interesting past of Dr. Ortiz. I swear, this story just keeps getting crazier and crazier. For starters, this is not the first time that Dr. Ortiz has faced disciplinary action from the Texas Medical Board. In August, the board announced that Dr. Ortiz would be monitored by other physicians after the board found out that Ortiz failed to meet the standard of care for a patient during a procedure. Not really sure what that means, but it sounds kind of sus or suspicious. Sorry, I was trying to be like, you know, young and hip, failed miserably. Anyways, furthermore, in November, 2020, Ortiz was performing surgery on a patient at the North Darling Surgery Center and the patient required CPR and needed transport to receive care. And honestly, this isn't very detailed and a patient requiring CPR during anesthesia administration isn't that uncommon. So I'm sure there was more to this story and there was probably a reason why the Texas Medical Board knew about it. And again, these are just little pieces of the puzzle that will probably show their face a little more once we know more about these allegations. And following this 2020 incident, he was given an administrative penalty of a whopping $3,000. Oh, but it doesn't stop there. Let's dive in to more of Dr. Ortiz history. In 1995, Ortiz was arrested over accusations of assault causing bodily injury to a spouse. The victim was Ortiz's wife that later divorced him. Shocking. In 2005, another female filed an emergency protective order against Ortiz claiming he assaulted her. In 2014, Ortiz was arrested for assault involving domestic violence of a third woman. In 2016, Ortiz was found guilty for animal cruelty. Okay. And I know there are wide ranges of animal cruelty, but this is what actually happened. Ortiz literally shot his neighbor's dog. Like literally shot the dog. And the reason he did this was because the neighbor whose dog it was helped the third female domestic violence accuser escape him and for testifying against him at a protective order hearing. So basically the female domestic violence accuser was helped by the neighbor. The neighbor had a dog. And in retaliation for the neighbor helping the domestic violence accuser, he shot the dog. Okay. And for this, he was sentenced to 25 days in jail and a whopping $4,000 penalty. And also the Texas medical board says that Baylor Scott and White Garland suspended Ortiz's clinical privileges for failing to tell the hospital about misdemeanor criminal charges against him. So he had all these charges that I just mentioned and he failed to mention them to the hospital he was working for and probably the medical board as well. And he was penalized. Because of this, the board issued a public reprimand. It required him to pay a whopping $2,000 penalty and suspended his privileges for 14 days, AKA a slap on the wrist. And if that wasn't enough, there are currently five patients being represented by one particular lawyer and all of these patients had emergencies at the surgery center after anesthesia administration from Ortiz. Those patients include, but are not limited to, an 18 year old man who had no surgery after a dirt bike accident, a 21 year old woman who had breast reduction surgery, a 39 year old male who underwent reverse vasectomy and also a man in his fifties who had a cardiac episode during surgery and staff had to stop the procedure. So it's odd because a lot of these patients are young and a lot of them experienced adverse effects with anesthesia for relatively routine surgeries, which is kind of odd and worth investigating. This particular lawyer believes that there are anywhere from 10 to 20 patients that had to be intubated, ventilated and transported to emergency department because of IV bag tampering. Again, I don't know where all this information is coming but I'm sure there will be more pieces of the puzzle that arise once there are further investigations into these allegations. Okay, so let's take a deep breath here because there is a lot to unpack here. Now let's talk about what I think about all of this. Well, for one, I still think that there are a lot of facts that we don't know about these allegations and I assume that as the days progress, more and more information will come out and we'll know a lot more about this stuff. For now, these are just allegations and we just have to kind of take them with a grain of salt. But this is kind of crazy. And one of the main questions I had while researching this is why anybody would wanna do this? Why would you tamper with IV bags? Allegedly. I thought about this for a minute and I realized I had no good answer for it other than why does anybody do anything evil? Nobody really knows. Although I can't help to ask, why would you go through all of this training for the better half of a decade just to do something like this? It's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around. It takes a lot of work in many years to become a practicing physician and just to throw it all away for this? Allegedly, it's very odd. And I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the Texas Medical Board. What do I think about the Texas Medical Board reaction to everything Ortiz has done and his entire past? Well, I think this is something that needs to be talked about. Why was someone with such a violent past given so many slaps on the wrist? Just a few thousand dollar fines and maybe a week or two of license suspended here and there. But that's it. And then it kept happening over and over again. How has someone that has had this happen to them over and over again still have a license to practice medicine? Like what does it take to lose your license? I mean, the guy actually shot a dog because he was angry. Isn't that a red flag for being a physician? Shouldn't the Texas Medical Board maybe talk about that at least? Also, I read somewhere that this isn't the first time that he's had these accusations that he allegedly shot other animals that would trek onto his neighbor's property. I don't know how true that is. So take that with a huge drain of salt. These are all just all locations. I don't know. However, between shooting an animal and having multiple accusations of domestic violence, maybe they should have at least had a meeting and been like, hey, so there's a doc that shot an animal and is allegedly harming multiple women. Do you think you still fit to practice medicine? I can't help but think that all this could have been prevented if the Texas Medical Board may have stepped in earlier. I mean, at least after like the second incident. Also, I thought animal cruelty was a felony, but I'm not sure. Maybe it's state specific. So let me know in the comments below if you know anything about that. There's any lawyers raise your hand. So yeah, in summary, I feel like the Texas Medical Board has some explaining to do. And just for completeness sake, Dr. Ortiz has not been charged with anything yet. These are all just allegations and everything related to this particular case is still under investigation. But don't worry, I will keep you updated on any information that I find out. And at the time of making this video, Dr. Ortiz has just been arrested and taken into custody. So that officially concludes this video. I'm curious to know what you all think about it in the comments below. Please let me know. I'm genuinely curious to see what you think. Did the Texas Medical Board handle this appropriately? What would you have done? All that kind of stuff. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, follow my Instagram and TikTok if you don't already. And as always, I'll see you all on the next video. Bye.