Is Dr. Jayant Patel the Latest "Doctor of Death?"

Des Bramich suffered a chest injury, but seemed to be recovering well.

But as soon as Bramich's condition appeared to be stabilizing, he suddenly took a turn for the worse. Fluid was building up around his heart, which needed to be attended to immediately. Dr. Jayant Patel, 55, who was on duty that day, took control of the situation. He immediately scheduled an operation to drain the excess liquid, "a procedure that required a large needle to be pushed into a sac surrounding his heart," Meraiah Foley reported for the Associated Press.

During what should have been a routine operation, medical staff watched in shock as Patel stabbed Bramich with a needle around 50 times in an effort to penetrate into the chest's pleural space. Chandler quoted Toni Hoffmann, a nurse in the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU): "the whole thing was like a nightmare" and Patel was "really out of control." The intervention failed, leading to Bramich's death the following day.

Hoffmann filed numerous complaints concerning Patel's handling of Bramich, as well as other patients. The grievances sparked an investigation, in which Patel would be the primary suspect in at least 90 patient deaths in Australia and the United States. Moreover, he would be linked to at least another 170 other cases of alleged medical misconduct in both continents, which had yet to be proven. As details slowly emerged, investigators realized that they were unraveling what was likely one of the biggest medical scandals in Australian history.

To read all the details of the ongoing investigation, see this. It has twelve "chapters". [thanks to BenS for the pointer]

Update: Brian Ferguson writes to say, "It gets better." Inquiries and court cases and accusations of bias and outrage from former clients and....