Kerry Dinallo, of Amityville, says life was 'ruined' after surgery by Dr. Alexios Apazidis, accused of fraudulently copying and pasting reports

Kerry Dinallo can hardly recall what life was like before her spinal surgery with Dr. Alexios Apazidis.

The taste of solid food. Visits with friends or the anticipation of a first date.

They seem like distant memories to the 62-year-old Amityville woman.

Three years ago this week, the Deer Park orthopedic surgeon, who's been accused of fraudulently copying and pasting dozens of operative reports verbatim for patients involved in home, workplace and vehicular accidents, severed Dinallo's jugular vein during spinal fusion surgery, leaving her near death on the operating table, court records show.

Nearly two weeks after surgery, after being sent home from St. Joseph Hospital in Bethpage, Dinallo's carotid artery ruptured from her surgical wound, leaving her again clinging to life.

Dinallo said she hasn't been the same since.

She eats only baby food or yogurt and coughs and vomits daily. She has twitches in her left eye and limited use of her right hand, major gaps in her short- and long-term memory, and she suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I don't have a life anymore. I don't even go out," Dinallo told Newsday last week in an interview at the law office of her Melville attorney, Kevin McAndrew, who is suing the doctor for medical malpractice and negligence. "He ruined my life. I can't eat right anymore. I can't think right anymore."

Dinallo is not the first patient of Apazidis, who had his medical license suspended by the state in 2015 following allegations of "negligence," to accuse the surgeon of shoddy operating room technique.

Court records filed in a separate case this month show that Crystal Hodgson, of East Islip, suffered an aneurysm of her carotid artery following spinal surgery performed by Apazidis in 2022. Hodgson suffered four postsurgical strokes and needed to relearn how to walk and speak.

Apazidis, a Harvard-educated surgeon now with Total Spine and Sports Care in Deer Park, declined to comment through one of his attorneys.

'What he did to me was wrong'

Dinallo, who has worked in a hospital laundry room for 35 years, met with Apazidis, then affiliated with Total Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, in August 2022 after complaining of back and spinal pain.

Apazidis diagnosed Dinallo with spinal stenosis and scheduled her for surgery five days later, court records show.

During the Aug. 29, 2022, surgery, Apazidis said he encountered an "aberrant" vessel crossing the cervical spine. In an attempt to mobilize it, the vessel ruptured and tore the internal jugular, Apazidis wrote in court papers. The vessel, he said, was clamped and a vascular surgeon was brought in to stabilize the vein before surgery continued.

McAndrew disputes Apazidis' account, arguing in court papers there was "no aberrant vessel" and that the jugular vein showed "extensive cauterization," a technique in which the blood vessels are burned to stop rampant bleeding. Apazidis contends he did not use a cautery to repair the jugular.

Dinallo was discharged from the hospital on Sept. 2. But seven days later, she heard a "pop" at home and blood began spurting from her neck contusion.

She lost 2 liters of blood before being taken by ambulance to Good Samaritan University Hospital for emergency surgery to repair a "thermal blowout of the carotid artery."

"He will say almost anything to save himself," McAndrew said of Apazidis. "He almost killed this woman. And then he billed her $570,000 for the surgery."

Dinallo said the surgery left her with no quality of life.

The injuries to her vocal chords cause her to cough and retch constantly. She can eat little more than yogurt, baby food and other pureed food and has difficulty holding items in her right hand.

Dinallo was also diagnosed with Horner's syndrome, a rare neurological condition that causes drooping of the left side of her face and eye.

"What [Apazidis] did to me was wrong," Dinallo said. "And he never apologized. Not once. You take an oath to be a surgeon and do the right thing. Not to butcher a person like he did to me."

In court statements, Apazidis said Dinallo was aware of the risks of the surgery, which include bleeding, nerve damage and paralysis.

Total Ortho, which has four Nassau County locations and has been named in multiple RICO lawsuits alleging their doctors provided unnecessary surgeries to individuals involved in staged accidents, did not respond to requests for comment.

Dinallo's lawsuit against Apazidis and Total Ortho is scheduled for trial on Oct. 5 in State Supreme Court in Nassau County.

Misconduct allegations

Apazidis, who has an office in Westbury and lives in St. James, is no stranger to allegations of misconduct.

In 2015, he had his medical license suspended for 36 months and was fined $50,000 after admitting to allegations of "negligence" and "incompetence," according to state Health Department records. The suspension was stayed, allowing Apazidis to continue practicing while on probation after paying the fine.

Apazidis admitted improperly prescribing a compounded topical gel containing ketamine, a powerful anesthetic with hallucinogenic effects, to dozens of patients. He also failed to use an official New York State prescription when distributing the medication and inappropriately prescribed oxycodone without meeting with or evaluating a patient, records show.

More recently, Apazidis has been named in several federal lawsuits filed by insurance carriers arguing that he performed unnecessary and risky surgeries on patients involved in lawsuits that allege they were hurt on the job, at home or on the road.

Court filings contend Apazidis has submitted at least 35 identical multipage operative reports — the number grew since Newsday's previous story on the surgeon — following cervical surgeries and another 14 after lumbar procedures, according to Dan Johnston, a Melville-based attorney who filed the complaint, which asks the state Office of Professional Medical Conduct to investigate whether to suspend the doctor’s medical license.

So-called operative reports — in this case roughly 800 words of highly technical language on patients aged 19 to 61 — detail a surgical procedure and are part of a patient's medical record. They are used for future patient care, billing and potential legal challenges. The reports generally include information about the patient, the surgical team, the procedure itself and any complications.

In a statement, state Health Department spokeswoman Marissa Crary said the agency "takes all allegations of medical misconduct seriously and follows the statutory process to ensure a fair, impartial, and thorough investigation aimed at protecting the health and safety of patients."

Four postsurgical strokes

Hodgson, who is employed in sales, was involved in a workplace accident on April 11, 2022, and met Apazidis at a Total Ortho walk-in clinic in Deer Park, she said in a court statement filed after reading Newsday's previous coverage of the surgeon.

She saw Apazidis a handful of times during which the surgeon never recommended physical therapy but instead insisted that surgery was the only option, Hodgson wrote.

Apazidis submitted an authorization request to the state Workers' Compensation Board for surgery but was denied because of Hodgson's lack of physical therapy.

The surgeon, she said, then directed her to come through the emergency room at Nassau University Medical Center — Total Ortho operates the hospital's orthopedics department — so the Sept. 6, 2022, procedure could classified as "emergent."

Hodgson, 50, who declined an interview request, said Apazidis discharged her following the surgery, even though she was "completely incoherent," with the doctor attributing her issues to painkillers.

The following day, her husband, William Hodgson, said his wife suffered continued confusion and an inability to speak, which Apazidis again attributed to a sensitivity to Percocet, court records show.

Several days later, Crystal Hodgson went back to the hospital, where imaging showed a jugular blood clot, a defect in her vertebral artery and an aneurysm in her carotid artery, which had caused four post-surgery strokes.

Apazidis' operative notes detailed none of those injuries, as they were copied and pasted verbatim from dozens of other patient reports, she said.

Hodgson wrote that she spent two weeks at North Shore University Hospital's rehabilitation facility, "relearning how to speak and walk. I continued to need another month of speech therapy thereafter, occupational therapy and physical therapy."

William Hodgson added that Apazidis "nearly killed my wife, failed to properly document anything individualized to my wife's surgery and then told me to relax and give it time as she suffered multiple strokes."