I nearly died several times in spinal surgery in Pasadena, CA by his partner Dr. William Costigan of Congress Medical Associates. I lost 10 liters of blood. I lost a perfectly good kidney. I had code blue stroke called on me due to being overdosed on Dilaudid and propofol. Then the Dilaudid caused me to have a small bowel obstruction, I was starved for 20 days, with an NG tube only extracting my GI fluids. As attending surgeon, Costigan is responsible for these things.

I suffered horrendously from the adverse effects I experienced in this surgery, and I am still almost completely incapacitated. Instead of five days, I was in the hospital for twenty four days. It was absolute HELL. I lost 16 lbs in the hospital, and another ten in the month after I got home.
Very strangely, all the various op reports from all the surgeons conflict with each other, and NONE of them state what happened, why I bled out so seriously. One surgeon who was in the OR for 8 1/2 hours(out of a 12 1/5 hour surgery) DID NOT EVEN BILL my insurance, no doubt because he didn't want to be associated with what happened to me in surgery. My insurance was billed for reconstructing my vena cava, but none of the surgery reports explain how this very large vein was ruptured, or even acknowledged that fact!
After getting home from the hospital, Costigan pushed me to have another surgery. Every time I saw him, for four months his question to me was not "how are you doing?" but "do you want to have another surgery?!" I felt like all he cared about was doing surgery, I felt that he did not care if I died as a result. I was aghast at this, because I was still suffering cardiopulmonary problems that had not been assessed, no way would I go under anesthesia again like this!

But Costigan refused to give me referrals to specialists to deal with the fact that I had a major blood transfusion, lost a kidney, had stroke called on me, was having bouncing high blood pressure and breathlessness. He claimed he did not know any specialists he could refer me to. Why is he performing risky surgeries like this, if he cannot refer a patient for appropriate and adequate follow up care after an adverse event in his surgery?

I begged and begged and begged him to give me referrals, I even begged my other surgeons to give me referrals - this is all in writing, and only after Costigan was called on the carpet by another surgeon did he give me ONE referral, to a "bro" of his, a doctor who made several highly inappropriate comments about my other doctors, and a sexually explicit comment directly to me, involving the male assistant in the room. The conduct of the doctor Costigan referred me to was so bad in fact, that I reported him to his boss, the Chief, Division of Geriatric, Hospital, Palliative, and General Internal Medicine at USC Keck Hospital Dr. Michael Karp, who agreed that doctor has a tendency to be inappropriate and apologized to me profusely.

Costigan refused to give me any referrals other than this one, and got defensive when I reported this to him. This is NOT a caring, appropriate doctor, at all.

Costigan's assistant took it upon himself to make narcotics prescribing decisions without getting input from Dr. Costigan. This is practicing medicine without a license. Another staff member sent me a screenshot showing the names and appointments of other patients. This is a raging HIPAA violation.

Too late, I learned that Costigan has the highest medical error rate of all surgeons in a 25 miles radius. He is among the top five most dangerous doctors in the state, as well. projects.propublica.org/…

Costigan is concerned with doing surgeries, but I cannot say that he is at all concerned about providing medical care after surgery.

He has failed to demonstrate to me that the hardware he put in my back is FDA approved. For all I know, it is counterfeit. Even if it is FDA approved, they have failed to provide me with the documentation of the medical device implants as required by the FDA. I have NO idea what he put in my spine!

Run as fast as you can away from this guy!

Submitted Dec. 3, 2017

$100 bucks for 10 minutes of his time. Doesn't take the time to actually figure out or solve the issue (even though I came back with MRIs like he requested). Where's a real doctor who helps when you need one? I'm just $$$ to him.

Submitted Jan. 11, 2012

If you need the best orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, call Dr. Diehl. Not only are his medical skills fantanstic, but he is also super friendly. I highly recommend this doctor!

Submitted Feb. 17, 2007