Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Anesthesiologist Sends 45 Sexts a Day During Surgery

(Seattle) — A Seattle physician accused of sexting during surgeries and improperly accessing medical images for sexual gratification has been suspended from practice for disregarding patient safety and engaging in sexual misconduct, Washington state health officials said on Monday.

Arthur Zilberstein, an anesthesiologist and surgeon licensed in Washington state since 1995, “frequently exchanged personal and often sexually explicit text messages” while in surgery at a Seattle hospital last year from April to August, a state medical board said in legal documents.

On a typical day during that period, Zilberstein worked as an anesthesiologist for medical procedures like cesarean deliveries while sending as many as 45 sexually charged texts, investigators with the Washington Medical Quality Assurance Commission, a branch of the state health department, said.

He also obtained medical records containing images of a woman with whom he was conducting an affair under false pretenses, accessing the visual materials “not for medical purposes but in order to view images of the patient for his own sexual gratification,” the probe found.

Zilberstein could not immediately be reached for comment after business hours on Monday.

The commission accused Zilberstein of tarnishing the reputation of the medical profession by sending color “selfies” to the same woman in which he appeared in hospital scrubs, wearing his hospital identification and exposing his genitals.

Zilberstein met secretly with the woman in the doctor’s lounge at the hospital to arrange for sexual encounters during a period he represented himself as her treating physician and prescribed her medications, according to the commission.

Among other violations, Zilberstein “compromised patient safety due to his preoccupation with sexual matters”, Washington health officials said.

“He’s supposed to be focusing on the patient during surgery,” said Kelly Stowe, spokeswoman for the Washington State Department of Health.

He has 20 days to respond to the charges and to request a hearing, Stowe said.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.