Chat Room

cosmetic surgery in florida

Anonymous Guest Feb 09, 2005 6:58 PM	Thanks to Sandra for sending the following article. . .Myrl Cosmetic surgery clinic had other woes BY DANIEL de VISE ddevise@herald.com Ronald Jones went in for an eyelid job so his new glasses would fit better. Jeanette Mordica thought a tummy tuck would succeed where diets had failed. Olga Myers, a 42-year-old real estate agent, sought a younger face. All three died after treatments at the Cosmetic Surgery Center in Hollywood. The Stirling Road clinic and its director, Dr. Richard Edison, loom large in South Florida's ultra-competitive plastic surgery community, where practitioners vie for business in full-page newspaper ads, late-night television pitches and in-your-face Internet sites. Now, Edison and his practice are at the center of a different sort of media blitz -- over Myers, who lapsed into a coma and died after a July 29 facelift at the center. Edison has publicly distanced himself from that death and has parted ways with Dr. Alton Ingram, the surgeon who operated on Myers. But Edison and the clinic have had other problems. The Florida Board of Medicine reprimanded the doctor in 1995 for leaving a sponge inside a woman's breast. And a 2000 lawsuit accused him of conducting a major surgical procedure without the aid of either an anesthesiologist or a nurse with anesthetic training. Clinics such as Edison's, which attempt complicated surgical procedures inside office buildings or strip malls, are the subject of debate within the health care industry -- largely because of the dangers surrounding anesthesia. SURGERY RULES State regulations require that ''qualified anesthesia personnel'' be on hand during any surgery requiring deep sedation. But language in the regulations gives doctors considerable leeway in obeying that rule. A doctor's report released Friday by state regulators indicates that no anesthesiologist or trained nurse anesthetist was present during Myers' surgery. That scenario echoes allegations made by relatives of Jones, a former railroad worker who stopped breathing midway through a 1997 procedure while under heavy sedation. ''The other day was his birthday, and it's just too much,'' said his mother, Rose LaVallee. ``He was my only child, and I came down to Florida to be with him. And now my husband and I are here by ourselves.'' Asked last week to comment, Edison replied in writing: ``We will be in contact with you next week.'' Three deaths at a single clinic in a five-year span is ''unusual'' in an industry that prides itself on a fatality rate of about one patient in 50,000, said Dr. Ed Luce, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and chief of plastic surgery at University Hospital of Cleveland. But blame is hard to assign. Each of the deaths at the Stirling Road clinic involved a different doctor. In one case, a jury concluded the doctor was not at fault. The clinic presents patient testimonials and before-and-after photographs on its Web site, which greets visitors with dancing words that dissolve into an enormous pair of breasts. TESTIMONIALS Broward court records reveal a different list of testimonials: • Diane Grande collected $400,000 in 1992 after Edison left a surgical sponge inside her breast. ''He actually insinuated that I put this sponge inside of me,'' Grande said. ``He is an unbelievable human being. He deserves to be crushed like a bug.'' The Florida Medical Board fined Edison $2,000 and faulted the doctor for keeping count of surgical sponges ``in his head.'' • Tina Marshall reaped a $297,500 malpractice settlement in 1996 over complications caused, according to her attorney, by breast implants too large for her body. ''They really forced these implants into a space that couldn't really accommodate them,'' attorney Maria Luisa Rubio said. ``They were literally forcing her body off the table, trying to squeeze these implants in.'' Had the case gone to trial, Rubio said she would have treated Edison ``much more as a businessman than as a surgeon.'' ''You see his Yellow Pages ads. He's on TV all the time. When I see him, I can't help but smile. His telephone number ends in F-A-C-E,'' Rubio said. • Jeanette Mordica was ashamed to tell her husband she was going for cosmetic surgery in March 1997, so she said she was spending the night with some old sorority pals. Mordica went into cardiac arrest the next morning in a recovery room. 'I had just gone out to wash the car, and my daughter rushed out to the garage and said, `You've got to get to the hospital, something's happened to Mom,' '' said Bernard Mordica, Jeanette's husband. Mordica died of a blood clot in her lungs. A civil jury found that Edison was not responsible for Mordica's death, her husband said. After a string of highly publicized deaths across Florida in the late 1990s, state regulators ordered a three-month moratorium on office surgery. Lifting the ban in November 2000, the Florida Board of Medicine enacted a new set of standards to govern surgery performed in doctors' offices. The new standards limit office surgeries to eight hours, cap how much fat can be liposuctioned out in an office setting and call for stricter monitoring of anesthesia. But state regulators have not policed plastic surgeons effectively, experts say, and doctors have found ways around the new regulations. ''If they were abiding by the rules, Myers would be alive and the patient in Naples would be alive,'' said one prominent South Florida doctor, who asked not to be quoted by name. ``We've got a board that has this rule. They are not enforcing it. Patients are continuing to die.'' The Naples patient, Maria Delaney, died July 2 after anesthesia complications at the start of a facelift at another facility. RECENT DEATHS Delaney's death was one of three recent fatalities at separate Florida facilities that have reawakened debate on the safety of cosmetic surgery. New safety regulations divide surgical procedures into three ''levels'' according to the depth of anesthesia. The rules are strictest at Level 3, the deepest sedation. However, experts say some doctors get around the tougher standards by treating a surgical procedure as Level 2 when it ought to be carried out as a Level 3 procedure. The result is ''a perilous state'' for the patient, said Dr. Brian Boyd, chairman of plastic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston. Many plastic surgeons who operate outside hospitals do not employ anesthesiologists, choosing instead to rely upon specially trained nurse anesthetists. Some surgeons forgo the trained nurses and essentially supervise the anesthesia process themselves. ''I wouldn't like to be treated under those conditions,'' Boyd said. A lawsuit filed against Edison and the Cosmetic Surgery Center by the family of Ronald Jones in 2000 includes a sworn affidavit from Dr. Joseph Boolbol of Miami, an expert witness. Boolbol wrote in the affidavit: ''It appears from the reports that this patient was not being monitored by an anesthesiologist or a certified registered nurse anesthetist'' during surgery. Edison's response is not preserved in the court file, and relatives say they are forbidden to discuss the details because of a confidentiality agreement. A newly released doctor's report on the August death of Myers hints at possible similarities to the Jones case. In a three-page ''Adverse Incident Report'' to state officials, Ingram lists two registered nurses on hand for the surgery, neither one an anesthetist. Ingram, contacted Thursday on his cellular phone, stated: ``I'm not interested at all in speaking with you, but thank you for the call.'' NOTE: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Dr. Richard Edison as Dr. Charles Edison.
Anonymous Guest Feb 09, 2005 7:00 PM	Thanks to Sandra for sending the following article. . .Myrl Plastic Surgery Nightmare By Carolyn Clifford Web produced by Jenny Clark February 8, 2005 Plastic surgery shows are feeding the frenzy for everything, from botox to facelifts. One woman who appeared on a reality show, however, found her experience a real nightmare. It’s been a year and a half since Liz Skirving’s claim to fame as a reality show contestant, but Liz turned out to be one of the more complicated cases. She had chin and cheek implants, eyelid surgery, nose reshaping, liposuction, fat injections in her lips, LASIK eye surgery, and veneers on her teeth, all in just 12 weeks. She expected some pain and swelling, but not the many infections that followed. After a second round of corrective surgery, things were still not right. She consulted with plastic surgeon Dr. Fred Aguilar, and he performed Liz’s third and final surgery. "She had pain, but no one knew why," Dr. Aguilar remembers. "When I saw her, I realized that the cheek implant had actually migrated into her lower eyelid. It was halfway up her lower eyelid, and the chin implant had migrated about 40 degrees from its correct position as well." The work done by the cosmetic dentist caused many of the problems. "He was having to pull to get into my mouth, which shifted the implant up towards the eye," Liz says. "When he drilled the veneers, he had to put his hand under my chin to drill and it buckled the implant." Dr. Rod Rohrich is the immediate past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. He says when it comes to plastic surgery, patients are not doing their homework. "Cosmetic surgery has really become a buyer beware specialty, because you really need to know before you go," he explains. Every year people have to undergo "redo" procedures after poorly performed surgeries. Doctors say they are twice as hard to do, and you rarely get the results you hoped for. Still, Liz has no regrets. "For me what it did was give me the confidence to move a bit forward, and I thought if I could survive that I could survive anything," she says. Here’s a basic checklist to go over before you go under the knife: - Find out if your surgeon is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, and how many times they have provided the procedure you want - Ask where they operate, and who performs the anesthesia - Get references - Check out before and after pictures - Ask about the risks http://www.wxyz.com/wxyz/health/article/0,2132,WXYZ_15919_3532592,00.html
narkose 1 post Aug 23, 2007 7:19 PM	DEATH From COSMETIC SURGERY Is Never Acceptable Claims Dr. Friedberg CORONA DEL MAR, Calif., Aug. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Olivia Goldsmith, author of The First Wives' Club, died having cosmetic surgery. (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070803/FRIEDBERG) With a 446% increase in cosmetic procedures since 1997, the book written by Dr. Barry L. Friedberg, specialist in anesthesia for cosmetic surgery, Anesthesia in Cosmetic Surgery from Cambridge University Press, is a timely arrival. "Minimally invasive anesthesia (MIA) dramatically increases patient safety for cosmetic surgery. Much like the days before fathers were permitted to observe the birth of their children, the public needs to be empowered to ask for safer anesthesia!" says Dr. Friedberg "All cosmetic surgery takes place on the superficial layers ('the wrapper') of the body. As such, all cosmetic surgery (even a 'tummy tuck') must be considered minimally invasive. Minimally invasive anesthesia (MIA) is only logical for minimally invasive surgery. Growing numbers of anesthesiologists are beginning to share this view but public safety demands that more need to be asked to provide MIA for cosmetic surgery," says Dr. Friedberg. According to Friedberg, the use of a level of consciousness monitor like the bispectral index (BIS) is fundamental to the administration of MIA. Prior to BIS monitoring, anesthesiologists were obliged to guess at the correct dosage and, for fear of under-medicating, routinely overmedicated by a factor of at least 20-30%. Anesthesia was the art of the "controlled over-dose." The advent of BIS monitoring has now made that style of anesthesia practice unnecessary and potentially dangerous according to recent research by Monk and Sebel. BIS provides a number between 0-100 derived from information obtained from the sensor on the patient's forehead. The lower the number, the deeper the level of consciousness, sleep or "hypnosis," as it is known in the anesthesia profession. General anesthesia sleep levels occur between 45-60. The patient doesn't hear, feel, or remember their surgery with general anesthesia. The same experience can be had with intravenous propofol at BIS between 60-75, a level Friedberg has incorporated as an integral part of MIA. For greater patient safety, Dr. Friedberg deems BIS monitoring a standard of care, especially for cosmetic surgery. Disclaimer: Dr. Friedberg is not employed by Aspect Medical Systems, makers of the BIS monitor. He is not a stockholder or a paid consultant. The opinions expressed herein are his professional opinion based on 10 years experience with BIS monitoring for cosmetic surgery. Contact: Barry L. Friedberg, M.D. Cosmetic Surgery Anesthesia Tel: (949) 233-8845 http://www.doctorfriedberg.com - a patient oriented, non-commercial web site