Doctor ordered to pay in ex-UNLV football player’s lawsuit could lose license

A neurosurgeon who lost a lawsuit to a former UNLV football player — whose career was ended by spinal surgery a jury concluded was botched — could lose his medical license.

Dr. Albert Capanna, 68, faces a medical board hearing in January, when a decision could be made to suspend or revoke his credentials based on a complaint linked to the same procedure, according to medical board Executive Director Edward Cousineau.

The Nevada Board of Medical Examiners filed a complaint against Capanna in December 2012 alleging medical malpractice and records violations in connection with his Sept. 17, 2010, surgery on former UNLV linebacker Beau Orth.

Capanna has changed attorneys several times since the complaint was filed, Cousineau said, which has dragged out the process.

His lawyer in the Orth case, California-based Anthony Lauria, did not return phone calls for this story.

Allegations in the complaint mirror those levied in Orth's 2011 civil complaint against the doctor, saying he performed surgery on the wrong disc in Orth's spine in 2010.

Jurors on Sept. 2 awarded Orth more than $4.2 million after they found Capanna negligent in his handling of the operation. It's likely Capanna will only have to pay a fraction of that judgement because of a 2002 law that limits pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases to $350,000.

Capanna, a long-time Las Vegas surgeon who once was chief of staff at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, is widely known in the local sports world.

According to his deposition in the Orth lawsuit, Capanna has worked with UNLV athletics for over 30 years and is also a ring-side physician for mixed-martial-arts fights.

But like his medical license, his status with the university and the Nevada Athletic Commission, which regulates mixed-martial-arts matches, could be in jeopardy.

During the deposition, Capanna admitted to botching a surgery on yet another former UNLV football player.

That player, defensive end Alvin Amilcar, was a transfer from the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, Calif., in 2011. He played in three games before injuring his back that year. During deposition, Capanna said he performed wrong-level surgery, or operated on the wrong vertebrae or disc, on Amilcar.

Amilcar did not sue the surgeon.

Capanna last week was still listed as the team's neurosurgeon on UNLV's sports medicine staff list.

But UNLV athletics does not have a "formal, contractual relationship with Dr. Capanna, nor have we ever," spokesman Mark Wallington said in a statement.

"There are a number of medical professionals who lend their services to UNLV Athletics," Wallington said. "We routinely evaluate these professionals and are already doing so in this area."

The Nevada Athletic Commission did not return phone calls for this story.

For Capanna, the Orth decision is just one of several complaints in Nevada over the years.

In 1991, Capanna, then the chief neurosurgeon at Sunrise Hospital, operated on a 5-month-old boy. According to a lawsuit filed by the boy's parents, Capanna misdiagnosed a cyst on the boy's brain, leading to 13 surgeries over 4 years. The boy died in 1995.

The two side settled on the eve of the trial for that lawsuit in March 1998, with Capanna agreeing to pay $3.5 million to the boy's parents, according to medical board documents.

A medical screening legal panel found "reasonable probability of malpractice" in the case, medical board documents show, but his license was never suspended or revoked.

Prior to the Orth case, Capanna had been sued six times for malpractice and paid a total of about $5.5 million in settling those cases, according to medical board records.

Contact reporter Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638. Find him on Twitter: @ColtonLochhead