Patient sues plastic surgeon and Massachusetts hospital

A Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center patient yesterday sued Dr. Loren J. Borud, a plastic surgeon with a history of alcohol and drug abuse, for allegedly performing his operation while impaired.

read more | digg story

Time

I find myself in an incomprehensible position... a situation real enough to kill me, should I lose my balance on a loosening tightrope. Yet so surreal I sometimes think my death will be nothing more than an instantaneous vaporization of the molecules I call my body. I am dying... we are all dying. But for most of us, living life prevails over the ever present pull of entropy.

This is as it should be. We are born to experience life to its fullest until our death. But like breathing, it is that space between the breaths which sets the tone for what follows.
I do not fear death, nor do I invite it. I reside in a world full of high tech medical miracles and doctors who perform them. It is, therefore, inconceivable that amidst these doctors and their state-of-the-art 3D scanners capable of turning the human body with its every secret and function inside out; to see how things work or might be fixed when they don't, that the simple mechanics of what is killing me remains a mystery.

I am dying in real-time, begging at the same-time, to be fixed, or at least, that an attempt be made before there is no-time.

Doctors.. made of special stuff, or so we think. Different from us. Different from each other.
Different.

Sharing knowledge

I found the Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery while searching for articles on surgical treatment of platysma contracture. As a former subscriber to the Journal of Plastic & Reconstructive surgery, which cost me over $500/yr, I found the following editorial especially significant:
Thatte M. On ethics and information. Indian J Plast Surg [serial online] 2007 [cited 2008 Jul 7];40:1. Available from: http://www.ijps.org/text.asp?2007/40/1/1/32652
Here is an excerpt:

"I would imagine most authors want as many peers as possible to read about their work, that is why they publish it in the first place. Fortunately, in medicine we do not enforce IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) in surgical innovations or else you would pay a fee every time you did someone's procedure. This is not true of journals. Access here is guarded jealously with fees to be paid for every paper you want to read as full text after say an online search. The argument being that unless someone paid, the whole edifice of publisher, search engine and so on was not feasible. The emergence of new strategies in the IT world, where advertising makes most applications free to the end user should give us an insight into new revenue models. If these end up allowing free access to knowledge albeit in exchange for seeing ads on the way, it will still be a huge boost to the thousands of doctors in developing countries who would otherwise never access that information. At the end of the day 'information is power' and we need to enhance free flow of information to colleagues around the world."

The current issue includes an article titled "Mycobacterium fortuitum abdominal wall abscesses following liposuction" As I began reading this paper I was astonished to find the name of the hospital openly revealed. You would never find this kind of transparency in any American publication. In our "advanced" society, this would be fodder for litigation.

Whose interest is served by keeping such information from the public? Evidently, in India, they seem to be serving the most important entity in the larger scheme of medicine: Patients. Sharing of research and information is encouraged, which is a far cry from the the way we do things here, where money is the constant undercurrent of every aspect of medicine.
India is setting an example for the world of medicine in ways we, in this country, are too selfish to understand will soon have to be the only way if the whole of humanity is to benefit.

What brings you here?

What brings people to this blog? Here are some examples of what people enter into search engines (mostly Google) to arrive here:

I have an ugly face

rhinoplasty swelling journey

ugly plastic surgery (very common search)

bad male rhino

ugly plastic surgery pictures (very common search)

splitting sutures facelift

ugly breast photos

ugly lips photos

plastic surgery ugly (very common search)

cosmetic surgery nightmare

ugliest plastic surgery

ugly surgery pictures (very common search)

disastrous plastic surgery pictures

neck swelling tissue hard plastic surgery

plastic surgery for very rich

ugly breasts

ugly need plastic surgery

cosmetic lip surgery malpractice

cosmetic surgery for true medical reason

you tube ugliest face operations

ugly breast implants

cosmetic surgery victims

medical malpractice breasts

does having rhinoplasty too soon after facelift cause damage to facelift (My favorite)

plastic surgery to be ugly

plastic surgery rules to revision

cosmetic surgery side effects

plastic surgery business suffering

plastic surgery victims

plastic surgery lawsuit

power lift cosmetic surgery complaints

how to fix ugly plastic surgery

am i crazy to want cosmetic surgery

plastic surgery catastrophe

malpractice liposuction documentary

what is the bad side of cosmetic surgery

ugly after plastic surgery

you tube cosmetic facelift

you tube defamation complaints

10 things plastic surgeon

rhinoplasty for my birthday

cosmetic surgery peer review

cosmetic surgery deaths

botched trigger finger surgery

malpractice of plastic surgeons

botched cosmetic surgery

patient accuses plastic surgeon of inappropriate

consent form for cosmetic surgery by a resident

false operative reports

malpractice and comments of plastic surgeon

facelift tough skin male

swallowing difficulties with neck lift surgery
~~~~

I have excluded surgeons' names entered into searches which direct them to this blog, but they are surprisingly numerous. Most just search the doctor's name, but some are phrased:

Dr. X facelift
Dr. X malpractice
Dr. X in City, State

You get the picture. I hope they find what they are looking for.

You come from all over the world:

Japan
Finland
Australia
Spain
UK
Canada
Israel
Netherlands
Italy
Belgium
France
Germany
India
Poland
Denmark
Mexico
Greece
Aland Islands
Ireland
Singapore
Hungary
New Zealand
Switzerland
Philippines
Latvia
Nepal
Hong Kong
Egypt
Austria
Luxembourg
Sweden

Just a little FYI