Is Sanjay Gupta the next Brian Williams?
CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta apparently can’t keep his patients straight — and is now under fire for some Brian Williams-like exaggerations of his surgical exploits, according to a report.
Gupta, a neurosurgeon, bragged about performing a lifesaving brain operation on a young girl in the aftermath of the devastating Nepal earthquake in April, but misidentified his patient in a dramatic video report the network aired, the website Global Press Journalreported.
“She has a fractured skull, a blood clot, and her brain is swelling,” Gupta said in the segment, standing near a stretcher holding a girl the network identified as Salina Dahal, 8.
“Without emergency surgery, she’ll have permanent damage. Or, like so many other earthquake victims, she’ll die.”
The video then cut to footage of Gupta wearing scrubs in an operating room, triumphantly proclaiming that “Salina will live.”
But Salina never had brain surgery — or surgery of any kind — and was treated only for a broken wrist and some minor head wounds, the website said.
Gupta did assist in a brain operation on another girl, Sandhya Chalise, 14 — and now the network and Gupta are scrambling to explain how its report went wrong.
Gupta appeared on CNN’s “New Day” Wednesday morning to clarify his previous reporting.
“What has been flagged for us is the patient that I operated on may not have been this 8-year-old girl, but rather, separately, a 14-year-old girl in that same hospital during that immediate aftermath of the earthquake,” he told anchor Chris Cuomo.
A CNN spokeswoman released a statement indicating that Gupta might not have been fully aware of who was on his operating table, the Global Press Journal said.
Gupta was asked to assist in a craniotomy on a “young girl,” the spokeswoman says, but adds, “All the patient information including name and age was provided to Dr. Gupta by the hospital,” the website reported.
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