Surgeon’s license held after California arrest

An Arkansas board on Wednesday suspended the medical license of a neurosurgeon arrested in California on child sexual abuse charges Sunday. James Kohut, 57, who had been hired by Sparks Health System in Fort Smith, faces charges in Santa Cruz County in the sexual abuse of two boys and one girl younger than 11 and of one boy younger than 14. The Fort Smith hospital fired Kohut on Monday. The Arkansas Medical Board had issued Kohut a license in February to practice in the state. It issued an emergency suspension of that license during a conference call Wednesday. Kevin O’Dwyer, an attorney for the board, said Kohut will likely be scheduled for a hearing before the board in August. On its website last week, Sparks Health System announced Kohut joined Sparks Clinic Neuroscience Center, where he would treat patients suffering from neck, back, arm or sciatic nerve pain, as well as traumatic brain or spine injuries. A health system spokesman said Tuesday that Kohut worked for the health system for about two weeks but was no longer employed there. According to a report in The Mercury News in San Jose, Calif., Kohut was disciplined by the Medical Board of California for viewing pornography on a hospital’s computers while he worked there between 2002 and 2003 and for attempting to remove an aneurysm from the right side of a patient’s head in 2002, even though X-rays showed the aneurysm was on the left side.