Carmody Thomas MD

"Excellent surgeon, my father's aortic valve replacement was a success. HOWEVER, Dr. Carmody would not take my father's ongoing series of post-surgery fevers seriously. Instead of getting to the bottom of what was going on, Carmody & co. discharged my father from the hospital prematurely. As it turns out, my father has endocarditis, caused by a strep infection, which was vegetating on his mitral valve. For a couple weeks I called, questioned, and nagged, trying to get my father's infection taken seriously, but since I'm just an attorney (notwithstanding the fact that I have done med-mal defense and sit on a couple committees advising doctors, plus in my spare time I volunteer doing DNA-based familial matching in a way that not even the state crime lab does, and notwithstanding my capability of reading and understanding medical literature), my pleas fell on deaf ears. FINALLY at my father's appointment several weeks post-op a doctor took his ongoing fevers seriously. He was hospitalized and placed on Rocephin (which is what I had been requesting a few weeks previously; evidently I can accurately process what I read in medical literature). My father's life would not have been endangered had Dr. Carmody taken the fevers seriously. After all, my father has no spleen (something that I kept trying to point out to Dr. Carmody, but he had little interest in discussing this with me), plus my father has a history of susceptibility to strep infections in his heart. Dr. Dr. Carmody may be a world-class surgeon, but he may need to do some reviewing regarding infectious med, the significance of fevers, and the devastating effect that a lack of a spleen may have when dealing with a strep infection. Based on my father's unfortunate experience, I assume that Dr. Carmody would have us pretend that the observations of fevers by everyone from Hippocrates to Maimonides to the present was in error. Sure, have Dr. Carmody as your surgeon, but if you even have a low-grade fever, make sure that you also have a good infectious med specialist assess you before you leave the hospital."