In this medical malpractice action, Herman R. Phillips and Mattie L. Phillips sued Bennett D. Cotten, Jr., M.D., an orthopedic surgeon, and his practice group, Southwest Georgia Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center, Inc., alleging that Dr. Cotten committed malpractice in the course of treating Mr. Phillips for pain and arthritis in his left knee.1 Appellees filed with their complaint the affidavit of Dr. Horst Filtzer, a vascular surgeon. Appellants filed a motion in limine to exclude the testimony of Dr. Filtzer, arguing that he was not competent to testify against Dr. Cotten under the new statute governing expert witness testimony in civil actions, OCGA § 24-9-67.1, because he was not an orthopedic surgeon. The trial court denied the motion in limine but granted appellants a certificate of immediate review. We granted appellants’ application for interlocutory appeal. For the reasons outlined below, we affirm the trial court’s ruling. The record shows that on October 21, 1999, Dr. Cotten performed total knee replacement surgery on Phillips’s left knee. On November 1, 1999, Dr. Cotten discovered that Phillips had developed an acute vascular problem. Dr. Charles Holley, a vascular surgeon, was consulted. On November 1, Dr. Holley performed a femoral arteriogram, which showed that Phillips had an abrupt occlusion of the popliteal artery at “above the level of his knee,” meaning that there was no blood flow in the artery below the occlusion. On that same day, Dr. Holley performed a revascularization and bypass on Phillips’s left leg to attempt to restore his blood flow. The surgery was unsuccessful. On November 3, Dr. Holley performed a guillotine amputation of the ankle because Phillips’s had a “dead left foot,” and six days later on November 9, Dr. Holley amputated the remainder of Phillips’s left leg below the knee. Dr. Holley opined that the occlusion was caused by peripheral vascular disease, not an intraoperative injury to the artery.
In his affidavit in support of Phillips’s complaint, Dr. Filtzer opined that Dr. Cotten was negligent in failing 1 to conduct a pre-operative vascular circulation assessment to confirm the presence of circulation; 2 in the alternative, to obtain a pre-operative consultation from a vascular surgeon prior to the performance of the knee replacement surgery; and 3 to timely monitor and respond to foot drop occurring in Phillips and recognize and respond to the vascular compromise in Phillips’s lower left leg. Dr. Filtzer asserted that Dr. Cotten’s deviations from the usual accepted standard of care resulted in the below-the-knee leg amputation. In his deposition, Dr. Filtzer testified that in light of Phillips’s age, 70, his history of high blood pressure, hyperlipidemia, and heart attack, and the fact that he only had one kidney, an objective assessment of the circulation in his lower extremities was required; that there were indications in the medical record of problems with Phillips’s foot from the moment he left the operating room, but nothing was done until November 1, when Dr. Holley was consulted; and that the stiffness in Phillips’s toe indicated vascularization problems, not a peroneal nerve injury often seen with foot drop, which causes the symptom of a floppy foot.
