Angry Patients Say Surgeon Ruined Their Lives

Wednesday June 21, 2000

Angry Patients Say Surgeon Ruined Their Lives

A group of spine surgeon patients is expressing fear and frustration.

They are concerned that the state may be about to re-license a doctor who, they say, botched their surgeries.

Dr. Bruce Hinkley also has a history of drug abuse and is being sued by some former patients who say he has ruined their lives.

Even though Dr Hinkley has tested positive for cocaine five times in his career (and four times in the past two years) and has been barred from practicing medicine at an Oklahoma hospital, there's a chance Hinkley could be back in operation.

The State Board of Medical Examiners will consider his reinstatement in a few weeks.

Dr. Hinkley insists he's sober and ready to resume his work

Before having his surgical privileges stripped at a hospital in Oklahoma in 1988, Hinkley had twice tested positive for cocaine.

According to the national consumer publication Questionable Doctors, Hinkley was also arrested in 1988 and was once detained after being "found with a gun, crawling in a pasture near his home…saying the Mafia or Nazis were after him."

He later checked into a drug treatment program.

In a subsequent video description, Hinkley admitted to having a troubled past.

QUESTION: "Do you agree you were diagnosed with an alcohol dependency?

HINKLEY: "I agree I was diagnosed in that fashion.

QUESTION: " ____________tranquilizers

HINKLEY: "Probably I had that diagnosis."

QUESTION: "And you were diagnosed with a dependency on cocaine?"

HINKLEY: "I probably carried that diagnosis."

In 1989, state licensing boards in both Texas and Oklahoma place medical practice restrictions on Hinkley and required him to take frequent drug tests.

In the 1990s, he opened a practice in Arlington and later at Garland Community Hospital, where new questions began to surface.

According to state records, Hinkley was performing surgeries at Garland Community when he tested positive for cocaine on January 12, 1998.

Nine days later, Hinkley performed a complicated 360-degree spinal fusion on Lolita Horner of Garland.

"He left and I never saw him again," Horner said. "From surgery, he left and he never came back." What Hinkley never told Horner was that he had allegedly severed a nerve in her spinal chord during the surgery.

A blood clot developed after the procedure and now Horner has very limited use of her legs.

"It's a bad situation and it was bad because this doctor, in my opinion, was a cocaine addict," Horner said. "He said never should have been allowed to operate on people-period."

Five days after Horner's surgery, Hinkley tested positive for cocaine again.

Seven days later, he again tested positive for narcotics.

Hinkley later convinced state officials, however, that those tests were inaccurate. He provided his own drug tests, which showed him to be clean.

Two months later, Dr. Hinkley was back in operation at Garland Community Hospital, where he performed two to three surgeries a week.

Another of his 360-degree fusion patients, Stephanie Cummings, says she now lives in constant, intolerable pain. "I couldn't sleep, it was horrible," Cummings said. "He had screwed my nerves into my vertebrae."

Since her surgery, scar tissue has started to coat her spine. Cummings said her current doctors tell her the scar tissue will soon paralyze her.

For now she survives the pain with an implant that pumps 400 milligrams of morphine into her blood stream every day.

Cummings blames Hinkley and the state officials who permitted him to practice.

"The State Board of Medical Examiners has no idea what I go through every day because they chose to give him a license." Cummings said. "Had they not have, I never would have met Bruce Hinkley and I would be fine right now."

Despite the claims against him, Hinkley told News 8 that he has now been sober for more than a decade.

Hinkley, however, declined an opportunity to appear on camera.

He said he has performed countless successful surgeries and is published in one of the most respected spinal journals in the country.

While Hinkley is currently suspended from practice, another questions remain: what role did Garland Community Hospital play in letting Hinkley operate, especially on a day when he admits he was sick and passed out on a gurney.