Indian-American anaesthesiologist did fatal throat exam on Joan Rivers

The identity of the third doctor involved in Joan Rivers' fatal throat exam has been publicly revealed for the first time as Renuka Reddy Bankulla.

Besides then-Yorkville Endoscopy medical director Lawrence Cohen and celebrity ear, nose and throat specialist Gwen Korovin, the Indian-American anaesthesiologist was also a part of Rivers' treatment, and she failed to record her weight, critical in determining how much anaesthesia was to be administered, which could have prevented the comedian's death, the New York Post reported.

Dr. Karen Sibert, a private anaesthesiologist in Los Angeles said that when the patient is in trouble, anaesthesiologists should carefully watch their heart rate, blood pressure and other vital signs to ensure the breathing, and "intervene promptly."

The city medical examiner had ruled that Rivers' died from a severe lack of oxygen to the brain.

Dr Bankulla, 47, had kept quiet about the whole incident and her lawyer, Bruce Brady has said that they didn't have anything comment on the matter.

She even declined to cooperate with the investigators for the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and had told probers only that she had given Rivers 120 milligrams of the powerful anesthetic Propofol — not the 300 stated in medical records. She explained that she had mistakenly "double-clicked" on computerised records.

Bankulla had received her MD in 1991 from Gandhi Medical College in Hyderabad, India, as per state records, and had trained at Flushing Hospital and Beth Israel Medical Center.