‘I think there may be a problem with the IV bags': Doctor recalls stunning discovery amid string of cardiac emergencies

Day 4 wrapped up Thursday afternoon in the federal trial against a former anesthesiologist accused of tainting IV bags causing several medical emergencies and one death.

Former anesthesiologist Dr. Raynaldo Ortiz faces ten counts for tampering with and adulterating IV bags at one of the clinics he worked at.

Ortiz pleaded not guilty to the charges on Monday.

Several witnesses took the stand on Thursday, including two anesthesiologists whose patients experienced sudden and inexplicable cardiac emergencies in August 2022.

Longtime anesthesiologist Dr. Chad Marsden spent much of the day on the witness stand.

Marsden testified about the ins and outs of anesthesia, how it works and how doctors respond to emergencies.

He also recounted an incident on August 19 involving a patient at Baylor Scott & White SurgiCare's North Dallas location.

The woman had undergone a procedure to drain fluid after a tummy tuck the previous day at the center and was transferred to a recovery area.

The patient’s blood pressure kept shooting “up, and up, and up” to dangerous levels, leading Marsden and staff to call paramedics to have her transferred to the nearby hospital.

“The situation was very confusing and frankly very scary,” said Marsden on the stand.

Fortunately, the woman’s condition improved at the hospital.

Marsden told jurors he was baffled by the inexplicable complication, one of the few in his entire career.

He couldn’t think of anything else over the weekend, he said.

And when the same medical emergency happened to a fifth patient a few days later, Marsden told the clinic’s administrator Ashley Burks: “I think there may be a problem with the IV bags.”

Burks and Marsden gathered the fifth patient’s IV bag and inspected it, finding a ‘tiny hole’ on the bottom of the bag.

Ortiz is accused of injecting IV bags causing five patients to experience cardiac emergencies in August 2022.

Ortiz is also accused in the death of fellow anesthesiologist Melanie Kaspar in June 2022.

Kasper took an IV bag home from the clinic to rehydrate herself after feeling ill, according to her husband.

The beloved doctor collapsed at her East Dallas home and was not able to be saved.

A representative for Baxter Healthcare, the company that manufactured the lactated ringer bags delivered to the clinic, also testified on Thursday.

Jeffrey Dihel told jurors the company’s own investigation, launched after the fifth case, found the IV bags passed inspections and were not tampered with before leaving their manufacturing facility in North Carolina.

Federal prosecutors and Ortiz’s court-appointed attorneys continued to dissect surveillance video clips showing Ortiz taking and placing IV bags into a warming bin and other medical staff retrieving bags for procedures where medical emergencies occurred moments later.

Neither side argues one point, Ortiz is never caught on camera injecting IV bags with syringes containing dangerous drugs.

Ortiz’s defense team has questioned doctors and anesthesiologists on the stand about whether the patients' underlying health conditions or drugs knowingly given during the low-risk procedures may be to blame for the medical emergencies.

Public defender John Nicholson says the surgical clinic and federal investigators ‘saw only what they wanted to see and ignored everything else’ in surveillance videos and blaming the most ‘convenient’ person.

If convicted on ten federal counts of tampering and adulterating consumer products, Ortiz could face life in prison.

Testimony continues Friday at 9 a.m.

The trial is expected to last two weeks, potentially up to three.