what he has done to my daughter is horrific. remember valerie thomas daughter kayla? she s the adorable 8-year-old who got sinus surgery from mark weinberger back in 2004 when her real problem was a brain tumor. she s 15 now and still struggling with complications from that surgery. he knew what he was doing. he knew that the surgery could cause me problems. what kind of a man do you think would skip out on all this trouble? a coward. while weinberger was chasing adventure in europe are you happy? i m happy, baby. kayla is growing up with a benign tumor in her head. kayla s mom says the tumor could not be removed because extensive scar tissue from the weinberger surgery blocked access to it. she s had spinal taps because of the tumor causing intercranial pressure. a lot of things are taken day by day. and that s the way you want to take it. i guess right now there s no other way to take it.
so he did order a cat scan of the sinuses and scheduled surgery. this, ken allen told the jury, is the cat scan dr. weinberger did of phyllis barnes sinuses. according to experts who testified at trial, the scan showed phyllis sinuses were actually clear. weinberger and i hesitate to call him a doctor treated phyllis barnes as nothing more than an insurance paycheck. according to the ear nose and throat doctor who discovered phyllis throat cancer two months later, the sinus surgery was not only unnecessary, it probably caused her cancer to grow more rapidly than it might have otherwise. ken allen told the jury the reason mark weinberger recommended sinus surgery for phyllis barnes was greed. mark weinberger needed money to support his lavish lifestyle, allen told the court, and sinus surgery is what paid the bills. will you please tell us your name and spell your last name for the court reporter.
and polyps and he could make her headache-free if she immediately had surgery. how soon did it happen? within two weeks. how is she? the headaches didn t stop. the light sensitivity got worse. it wasn t until she took kayla to specialists that she finally discovered the cause of kayla s misery. they did a cat scan as well of her head, and they told us that evening that there was a tumor there. and what was that night like? that was the worst night of my life. though the tumor turned out to be noncancerous, it was growing. surgeons told the thomases kayla would need immediate brain surgery to reduce the pressure in her head. and kayla, do you understand what the doctor said? i didn t understand most of it, but some of it like i would have to have surgery and then
i ve done sinus surgeries for 18 years. never saw the technique that he used, and it was the benefit to the patients was amazing. weinberger s business model it seemed was based on the three-word slogan of salesmen everywhere volume, volume, volume. i think he measured a certain amount of his worth by how many procedures he was doing. of course, the fact that nearly all of weinberger s patients seemed to have the same problem and required the exact same surgery greatly simplified things. deviated septum and polyps. deviated septum and polyps. deviated septum and polyps. what did the doctor recommend? surgery immediately. surgery. surgery asap. as consistent as these former patients say weinberger was with his diagnoses, suzette denning ton said he was quite flexible when billing insurance
in court documents, allen alleges that weinberger misdiagnosed phyllis trouble breathing and gave her a surgery she didn t need while missing the advanced throat cancer that eventually killed her. he needs to understand it wasn t just the insurance companies that were harmed. it was people. lives were destroyed. people were hurt. phyllis barnes, it turns out, was just the tip of the iceberg. once mark weinberger fled, malpractice complaints began flooding in to lawyers like ken allen. among those new clients were kayla thomas and her mother valerie. in 2003, 8-year-old kayla began having headaches so severe they caused vomiting and extreme sensitivity to light. valerie said she decided to take kayla to dr. weinberger after seeing a billboard about sinus surgery to cure headaches. i took her to his office. they did a cat scan and they said she had a deviated septum