A 58-year-old man from Riverside County is suing the University of California Board of Regents after undergoing a routine outpatient procedure to repair the meniscus in his left knee ended with him tragically losing much of his leg.
In April 2024, Wayne Wolff, an electrician and resident of Perris, checked into UCI Medical Center’s Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center where UC Irvine team Dr. Dean Wang, the head of the hospital’s sports medicine, performed his surgery, The Orange County Register reported.
In a lawsuit filed on Feb. 11 in Orange County Superior Court, Wolff and his wife, Lisa Wolff, a long-time emergency room nurse, allege Dr. Wang severed and cauterized a main artery, which supplies blood to the lower left extremity, that he mistakenly thought was a vein.
The suit further claims that it took Wang and his staff nearly 40 minutes to get the bleeding under control and that at the conclusion of what’s considered a standard procedure, told the electrician’s wife that he had “nicked a vein,” allegedly playing down the amount of blood the 58-year-old had lost.
Over the next several days, Wolff, who was experiencing excruciating pain, remained in the hospital as his conditioned worsened, though attending doctors left in charge after Wang left town for a conference, never moved him to intensive care.
Advocating for her husband, Lisa told hospital staff that her husband’s pain was not consistent with the operation he had undergone only to be told by one doctor that her husband possibly abused narcotics at home, the suit claims.
Despite the swelling in his leg, the absence of a pulse in the limb, his skin being cool to the touch and the fact that he could not feel or move his toes, requests for an ultrasound were denied for two days.
When one doctor finally ordered an ultrasound on the 58-year-old’s leg, it was canceled by Dr. Wang.
Three days after his initial surgery, Dr. Wang once again operated on Wolff and later reported to his wife that he’d suffered a blood clot in the artery, according to the suit. A vascular surgeon, however, performed a third surgery to try and save the leg and found no clot but that the artery had been severed in the first surgery.
Ultimately, the 58-year-old lost much of his left leg below the knee.
Dr. Wang reportedly replied “I don’t know” when asked by Lisa why simple imaging tests were not ordered, why the source of her husband’s pain was never sought and why the surgeon canceled the ultrasound.
The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges negligence, abuse or neglect of a dependent adult, loss of consortium and emotional distress.
A spokesperson for the hospital told The O.C. Register that they had no comment on the pending suit.
