Kamloops neurosurgeon to be tried for negligence after failed back surgery

A Kamloops doctor is facing a trial over medical negligence after a woman’s back surgeries left her in more pain than she arrived with.

The 61-year-old Williams Lake woman had chronic back and leg pain for more than a decade when Dr. Ferdinand Matanaj, a neurosurgeon, agreed to insert screws into her vertebrae to alleviate the pain in February 2021.

After the patient, Karen Chamberlain, filed the lawsuit in September 2023, Matanaj argued the two-year limitation period had passed and it should be tossed. A BC Supreme Court judge disagreed, largely because the patient didn’t know how severe her problems had become until the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons investigated her case.

In the spring of 2021, she was led by Matanaj to believe she might see improvements within six months to a year, and the pain she experienced was likely one of the potential risks he warned her about.

“It was, she says, only when she received the final reports… that those hopes were dashed, the true nature of Dr. Matanaj’s negligence and its consequences were revealed, and consequently that a legal action became justified,” Justice Warren Milman’s recent decision reads.

Chamberlain saw Matanaj first in 2017 after seeing other doctors for her chronic pain. The pain was relapsing after a pair of previous operations, but her last neurosurgeon couldn’t do the spinal decompression operation she was told she needed.

In Kamloops, Matanaj did the first of three operations on Feb. 1, 2021. He inserted two screws into her spine, but she awoke with severe leg pain because, as they soon discovered, they were touching a nerve. Chamberlain agreed to a second operation so they could be repositioned, which was done that same day.

“For reasons that are not explained in the record before me, Dr. Matanaj repositioned only one of the two screws. The other was left where it was,” Milman’s decision reads.

Chamberlain returned to Williams Lake the next day, but she was still in pain. Another medical scan found one of the two screws was still touching the nerve. In the third operation, four days later, Matanaj removed all the hardware.

Chamberlain said she continued treatment for the pain, but the root cause of her back issues appeared to remain unresolved.

By September 2021, she filed a complaint to the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons. An investigation found Matanaj “failed to meet the applicable standard of care” by selecting the wrong procedure, leaving one of the two screws in the incorrect place and by removing all the hardware instead of correcting the error, accoding to Milman’s decision.

The college’s report found Chamberlain’s condition would likely worsen because of Matanaj’s errors, according to the decision.

Matanaj argued Chamberlain “had the requisite knowledge” to file her lawsuit by March 2021, so the two-year limitation would have expired by that time.

Chamberlain disagreed, telling the court she “formed a belief” Matanaj didn’t properly treat her, but she held out hope she would recover based on his advice in April 2021 that it might improve. The college’s reports armed her with the knowledge she needed to bring the matter to court, according to the decision.

Milman agreed, finding the regulator’s report put the case “on an entirely new footing, involving different allegations of negligence leading to different, and more serious, consequences.”

Chamberlain’s complaint will move ahead to a civil trial against Matanaj, but it’s not clear when it will be scheduled.