Deaths & Denial: Texas Surgeon Accused Of Keeping Patients From Getting Transplant

A Houston, Texas surgeon has been accused of allegedly altering patient files to keep them from receiving life-saving liver transplants. Dr. Steve Bynon Jr., who is still listed on Memorial Hermann Medical System's website (as of the publication of this article):

Dr. Bynon has extensive experience in liver transplantation performing over 800 procedures in his career. 

Perhaps he decided 800 was plenty because evidence has been uncovered that he may have altered patients' records on a government database, in a manner that would make them ineligible or unlikely to receive a donor's liver- like changing their recorded height or weight.

It appears that someone made a complaint against Dr. Bynon, and upon review of some of his records, there were impossible scenarios, like a toddler listed as weighing 300 pounds. Which, by using the power of deductions, we can infer that he was (again, allegedly) keeping even small children from getting a life-saving donor liver.

READ MORE: Meet Texas Dr. Death: The Surgeon That Killed & Maimed Patients

It is currently unknown how many patients have been left waiting on a liver or even died because of this alleged record altering. It's heartbreaking to think of how many people have needlessly suffered, or how many people have lost loved ones.

It does appear that some people may have died because of this, as a group reviewing Memorial Hermann did find that they had an unusually high amount of patients who died while waiting for a liver.

It all begs the question- why was this not caught by anyone else? Is there not a review process or a routine audit of these types of records? Perhaps there will be going forward, and here's hoping that if Dr. Bynon did cost patients their lives and well-being, he is punished appropriately- in a court of law.