The Ugly Side of Cosmetic Surgery

IPL and Laser Damage

2010-06-27T17:52:00.003-04:00

I came across this messageboard today and feel it is well worth visiting by anyone interested in any cosmetic procedure.

Also worth reading: What is IPL and Laser Damage Support All About?

The people who truly have the power to put an end to the devastating harm caused by the cosmetic surgery industry are out there.. You. You can "just say no" to subjecting your normal, healthy body to the trauma of unnecessary cosmetic procedures! What? Sounds too simple? If you can't say no, then at least realize that you are gambling with more than your looks. You are gambling with your health and your life.

FDA Warns About Lipodissolve Product Claims

2010-04-09T00:04:00.001-04:00

It's a tempting premise: Get a series of drug injections and see pockets of fat on your body go away for good.

But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting consumers about false and misleading claims being made about products used in lipodissolve, and about other misbranding of these products.

Recipients of lipodissolve get a series of drug injections intended to dissolve and permanently remove small pockets of fat from various parts of the body. The process is also known as injection lipolysis, lipozap, lipotherapy, and mesotherapy.

“We are concerned that these companies are misleading consumers,” says Janet Woodcock, M.D., director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “It is important for anyone who is considering this voluntary procedure to understand that the products used to perform lipodissolve procedures are not approved by FDA for fat removal.”

The drugs most regularly used in the lipodissolve injection regimen are phosphatidylcholine and deoxycholate (commonly called PC and DC, respectively). Other ingredients may also be used, including drugs or components of other products such as vitamins, minerals, and herbal extracts.

What Consumers Should Know

FDA is alerting consumers that

it has not evaluated or approved products for use in lipodissolve
it is not aware of evidence supporting the effectiveness of the substances used in lipodissolve for fat elimination
the safety of these substances, when used alone or in combination, is unknown
it is not aware of clinical studies to support medical uses of lipodissolve

In addition, FDA has reports of unexpected side effects in people who’ve undergone the lipodissolve procedure. These side effects include

permanent scarring
skin deformation
deep, painful knots under the skin in areas where the lipodissolve treatments were injected

FDA Actions

On April 7, 2010, FDA announced it had sent warning letters to six medical spas in the United States—and a cyber letter to a company in Brazil—for making false or misleading statements on their Web sites about drugs used in the procedure, or for otherwise misbranding lipodissolve products. (Cyber letters are letters sent to companies whose U.S. online sales of products may be illegal.)

The U.S. medical spas receiving warning letters make various unsupported claims about lipodissolve, such as assertions that the products used in lipodissolve

are safe and effective
have an outstanding safety record
are superior to other fat-loss procedures, including liposuction

Additionally some of the letters indicate that the companies have made claims that lipodissolve can be used to treat certain medical conditions, such as male breast enlargement, benign fatty growths known as lipomas, excess fat deposits and surgical deformities.

The U.S. companies receiving warning letters in regard to lipodissolve products are

Monarch Med Spa, King of Prussia, Pa.
Spa 35, Boise, Idaho
Medical Cosmetic Enhancements, Chevy Chase, Md.
Innovative Directions in Health, Edina, Minn.
PURE Med Spa, Boca Raton, Fla.
All About You Med Spa, Madison, Ind.

FDA is requesting a written response from these U.S. companies within 15 business days of receipt of the letters stating how they will correct these violations and prevent similar violations in the future. These firms were told that failure to promptly correct the violations may result in legal action.

The Brazilian firm getting a warning letter markets lipodissolve products on two Web sites: zipmed.net and mesoone.com. FDA will notify regulatory authorities in Brazil of this action. The agency has issued an import alert against the zipmed.net and mesoone.com entities to prevent the importation and distribution of unapproved lipodissolve drug products into the United States. Importing and distributing unapproved drug products is a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

How to Report Side Effects

Consumers and health care professionals may report serious side effects with the use of lipodissolve products to FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting Program either online, by regular mail, by fax, or by phone.

online: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/medwatch/medwatch-online.htm⁴
by regular mail: Use postage-paid, pre-addressed FDA form 3500⁵
by Fax: (800) FDA-0178
by phone: (800) FDA-1088

This article appears on FDA's Consumer Updates page⁶, which features the latest on all FDA-regulated products.

Date Posted: April 7, 2010

Botox death lawsuit filed in Indiana over death of young girl

2010-03-25T12:27:00.003-04:00

The parents of a 10-year old girl with cerebral palsy who died in 2008 have filed a lawsuit against Allergan, Inc. and the doctors who treated their daughter because they used Botox in an attempt to treat her conditions. The doctors at the Riley Hospital for Children in Indiana used the controversial cosmetic drug to appease the girl’s muscle spasms, despite the fact that Botox has never been approved for such use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The parents allege that the doctors and drug makers failed to warn them or inform them of the possible life-threatening side effects that are associated with Botox. The drug contains a small amount of toxin that is widely recognized as a cause of Botulism, a paralytic condition that considerably restricts muscle use. The daughter passed away within days of her Botox treatment, as the toxin spread and inhibited her breathing.

The FDA placed a Black Box warning on Botox in 2009, after the administration had received numerous reports of complications stemming from using the drug for treating cerebral palsy. In February 2008, the FDA issued a warning about the possibility of complications, despite the fact that the drug has only ever been approved for use in cosmetic treatments such as wrinkle reduction and smoothing of the skin, as well as alleviating crossed eyes, combating heavy sweating, and appeasing involuntary muscle contractions and eye blinking.

At least a dozen lawsuits have been filed against Allergan and various medical professionals and other parties, as people are alleging that the drug has been falsely pushed as a treatment for cerebral palsy and other similar illnesses. The parents of the 10-year old girl had to first present their claim to the Indiana Department of Insurance, which will then allow a panel of medical professionals to determine if their case can move forward to state or federal court. Allergan recently won a lawsuit filed in California alleging that the company was negligent in the death of a 7-year old girl, who was also being treated for cerebral palsy with Botox.

Suit ties death of woman to face lift

2010-03-04T17:36:00.007-05:00

By Jonathan Saltzman
Boston Globe Staff / March 4, 2010

Donna Ames, a recently divorced mother of three, was depressed and wanted to look younger. So the 49-year-old woman went to the Waltham office of Lifestyle Lift, a national cosmetic surgery company that markets its face lift as a way to “transform your life.’’

Instead of making her wrinkles vanish, the procedure killed her, Ames’s family and lawyers say in a lawsuit filed yesterday.

Minutes after a doctor administered local anesthesia on July 10 last year, Ames’s body jerked violently, and the oxygen in her blood plunged, according to a summary written by her family’s attorneys. By the time the clinic called an ambulance, the Lowell woman was brain dead.

“My mom wanted to make her life better, and they sort of took it away,’’ Evan Ames, her 18-year-old son and ad ministrator of her estate, said yesterday of Lifestyle Lift. “I’m very mad.’’

The Middlesex Superior Court suit is not the first time the company, based in Troy, Mich., has been accused of wrongdoing.

Last year, Lifestyle Lift, which says it operates more than 40 centers nationwide and advertises its procedure as safer and less invasive than traditional face lifts, agreed to pay $300,000 in penalties and costs to New York State for publishing bogus consumer reviews on websites.

Lifestyle Lift said in a statement yesterday that it was “very sorry about the sudden and unexpected passing of Ms. Ames.’’ The company has not seen the suit but said its face lift “is known as one of the safest facial procedures available because it uses a local numbing medication rather than general anesthesia.’’

The statement also said that Ames did not disclose a history of seizures or allergies to anesthesia and that staff called 911 when she became ill.

The defendants named in the suit are Lifestyle Lift and two physicians, Dr. Sanchayeeta Mitra and Dr. James C. Alex. The center, which has moved to Burlington, referred inquires to the company’s headquarters.

Evan Ames, a freshman at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, said his mother had talked about getting a face lift for some time, although he had no idea she had gone to Lifestyle Lift until after she died.

His mother, he said, had struggled for years with bipolar disorder and had been depressed since getting divorced from his father about two years ago. She had owned a maternity clothing store in Burlington for seven years, he said, but was not working at the time she had the surgery.

“She was trying to turn her life around and get another start,’’ said Ames.

Donna Ames paid $4,700 for the elective surgery, considerably less than for traditional face lifts, which cost more than $10,000 on average, according to the Ames family’s lawyer, Andrew C. Meyer Jr. of Boston. She went to the Waltham center with a friend, who planned to drive her home after a procedure that was supposed to take only about an hour.

Ames’s vital signs, including her blood pressure and oxygen levels, were stable when she entered the center, Meyer said. But minutes after she received anesthetic injections, she had a seizure and her blood pressure and oxygen levels fell, which Meyer said is a potential side effect from anesthesia.

Ames was not hooked up to any continuous-monitoring equipment, and no anesthesiologist was present, according to Meyer, so the medical staff did not know immediately how little oxygen she was getting. Forty-eight minutes after Ames received her first injection, the staff called for an ambulance; she was deprived of oxygen for far too long, Meyer said.

It was not immediately clear yesterday whether continuous-monitoring equipment and an anesthesiologist were required by law. But Meyer said a medical specialist hired by the family contends that they should have been present in case of potentially dangerous side effects from the anesthesia.

Ames was taken by ambulance to Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where her heart stopped twice and she was diagnosed as brain dead, Meyer said. Her family took her off life support a week later.

“She goes in [the Waltham center] with a friend, expecting to be out in an hour or so, and was brain dead in half an hour,’’ Meyer said.

Lifestyle Lift says on its website that it has treated more than 100,000 people since 2001 and that “the results have been life-changing.’’ The procedure, it says, is less expensive than traditional face lifts and avoids “the anesthesia risk and physical trauma’’ of the conventional process, which employs general anesthesia.

Unlike traditional face lifts, Lifestyle Lift is not a full face lift or neck lift but creates muscle tension using sutures instead of patients’ skin, Meyer said.

The Lifestyle Lift has been featured on numerous television programs, including “The Montel Williams Show,’’ and has been advertised widely in infomercials. But the company agreed to pay a $300,000 settlement last year after New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, determined it had engaged in “astroturf marketing,’’ *creating bogus grass-roots buzz by having employees fabricate online testimonials.

“I need you to devote the day to doing more postings on the Web as a satisfied client,’’ employees were told in one internal e-mail, according to Cuomo’s office.

After the settlement, Lifestyle Lift said it had changed its informational material to reflect actual patients’ comments.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.

My note:
* This is exactly what some plastic surgeons do who maintain an online presence. I know of one Indianapolis surgeon who pays people to boost his online persona. Consequently, he has also engaged in the most brutal, unethical legal take-down of a patient's website.

What Happens If Your Mother Has Plastic Surgery?

2010-02-05T01:14:00.003-05:00

by Delia Ephron
Posted: February 3, 2010 01:13 PM
The Huffington Post

I haven't been watching many reality shows lately because of the crying. There is simply too much of it. Last season on Project Runway, Christopher cried because he was sure that he was the only person in the world who would design a dress inspired by a rock (something I am sure he is wrong about). I have no idea how much crying there is on The Hills, since I was never a fan, but it did catch my attention in People magazine that Heidi Montag, star of the show, cried after she had ten plastic surgery procedures in one day. Heidi, I know from a quick Google search, is 23, although since her plastic surgery she looks 33. Which is actually something to cry about.

I have been interested in and done research on this subject spun slightly different: What happens if your mother (not your favorite reality star) has plastic surgery? This is the subject of my new novel for teenagers, The Girl with the Mermaid Hair.

If, as a teenager, you spend hours in front of a mirror deciding, say, whether one nostril is larger than the other or worrying whether your breasts point in different directions (typical teenage obsessing), do you outgrow this madness or make more radical choices if your mother comes home with larger lips, a smaller ass, a new chin, a different nose, bigger breasts? How do you feel if your mom suddenly doesn't have any expression in her face? Or if you look into your mother's eyes and no one is home?

Your main job as a teenager is to learn to love yourself. How can you do this if your mother hates herself?

In my research, what was so startling was how aware all the teenage girls were of their mother's fear, or, more accurately, their hatred, of aging. One girl said, "Every time I wrinkle my forehead, my mother points it out and tells me not to. Even if I'm in the middle of a really important conversation." Another spoke about "competitive dieting" with her mom, how she couldn't help but engage in it even though she thought her mother's obsession with fat was "crazy." There is a study out this week from the Girl Scouts of the USA telling us what we already know, which is that the fashion industry and its use of ultra-thin models is making teenage girls too obsessed with being skinny, and distorting their body image. In my more limited unscientific research, the mothers are as strong an influence. Going on shopping trips with mom, usually a bonding experience, became all about hearing moms moan about their fat and rolls. Or seeing your mother trying on something, look in the mirror and say, ""I look ugly."

I have vivid memories of my own adolescence when the main purpose of shop windows was not to see the clothes in them but my own reflection, when hours could be spent in front of a mirror deciding if my eyebrows matched. Emotionally, teen life is no different today, but now you can act on your own insecurities. You can fix them.

A lot of healthy acting out occurs in the mirror, as my research showed. Singing and dancing and even telling off people who hurt your feelings or trying on new identities. But there was also a lot of obsessing about body image. One girl got dressed using four mirrors, running from one to the next: one had good indoor lighting, one was a "skinny" mirror, one had natural light, one she could get the closest to. "If something is wrong with you," a teenage girl said, "the mirror magnifies it." Another said, "If I think something's wrong with me, like my thighs are too fat, when I look in the mirror that's all I see."

God knows, I am not advocating growing old naturally, just to remember what a tender fragile time adolescence is. In my research, one teenage girl confided, "Seeing my mother after her surgery scared me to death." We need our moms to be stable and secure. I have so many friends who will tell me with surprise, when looking at photos of themselves when they were younger, "Hey, I was really cute. I didn't realize it." No one does. You have to get older to realize it. Imagine if you got older and realized that you'd destroyed your younger self. You had operated it away.

Now that's something to cry about.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Take it from one who knows..... that IS something to cry about. -Lucille

Business owner files suit over hidden cameras at Meridian Plastic Surgery Center

2009-08-09T16:41:00.009-04:00

(Update: I just learned from a reliable source that the laptop IP connected to the cameras was used by the office manager, and did not belong to any of the surgeons. Still.. hard to believe they were not aware of the cameras. They must have been. They jointly own the building and business. )

Carmel - The owner of a tanning company is suing a Carmel plastic surgery practice over secret surveillance.

The lawsuit accuses the surgery center of pointing hidden cameras at naked women. Pam Sanders says she and dozens of women were violated by prying eyes.

"There was a hidden camera that was in the room that I had been spray-tanning my clients in, partially nude, nude, as well as myself nude," Sanders said. "I don't want this to ever happen to anyone else again."

Sanders filed a civil lawsuit Friday against Van Natta Plastic Surgery and Meridian Plastic Surgery Center in Carmel. A former client of the practice, she ran her spray tan business in a makeup room at the center, where women also typically changed clothes.

The suit claims concealed pinhole cameras were hidden in a sprinkler on the ceiling.

"I believe there's a presumption that the camera was there, was on, and it showed whatever it showed," said Sanders' attorney Robert York.

"I never ever would have put my clients, myself, my friends in a room where they were, you know, it's very personal," Sanders said.

The lawsuit was filed class action because Sanders says she spray-tanned at least 40 people, all of whom were unaware that a camera was allegedly watching their every move.

"I don't know if it's going to pop up on the internet or pop up here or there," Sanders said.

The lawsuit alleges the secret surveillance was connected to an IP address and a laptop computer, belonging to a member of the plastic surgery practice.

Sanders says she found out about the cameras in May from an employee. She filed a police report and says she confronted the doctors.

"They admitted there was a camera in there. They told me it was originally in there to deter theft," Sanders said. "He did tell me that he had disconnected the camera awhile back."

But Myra Borshoff Cook, a spokesperson for the practice, says the cameras were on. She says the surgery center mounted two cameras - one in a break room, the other in the makeup room - because of a problem with theft.

"They were installed for security purposes," Borshoff Cook said.

When asked if clients were made aware that there was a camera in the room, Borshoff Cook said, "I don't know."

"We have no reason to believe that any of the taping that might have inadvertently been done in the room where they were doing the tanning was viewed by anyone," she added.

But the mere presence of a camera doesn't sit well with Pam Sanders.

"I was beside myself. To have found this out is beyond gutwrenching," she said.

The surgery center says it hired a forensics company to analyze the tapes to determine if they were viewed by anyone. As for a criminal investigation, Hamilton County police say the case is open, but not active.

Worthy of a second read

2009-06-09T15:45:00.004-04:00

Excerpts from Ms. Magazine - By Jennifer Cognard-Black

How the pitch for cosmetic surgery co-opts feminism

-It’s debatable why cosmetic medicine has become so popular. Might it be the result of articles on “scalpel slaves” and “secret surgeries” that saturate women’s magazines? Or could it be a result of makeover-focused reality TV shows that have proliferated since the 2003 debut of Extreme Makeover?

-Once considered clandestine and risky, cosmetic procedures are currently treated across a variety of media as if they were as benign and mundane as whitening your teeth. Advertisers, TV producers, publishers, PR personnel and even physicians themselves are touting it as an effortless, egalitarian way for women of all backgrounds to “enhance” their looks and “stay young.”

-Not only have cosmetic procedures become more acceptable, but they’re being promoted in less sensationalized ways to whole new markets. Increasingly, reality TV’s Cinderella tale of surgical transformation is being replaced with a smart woman’s narrative of enlightened self-maintenance. Media sources now compliment potential customers as mature women who are smart, talented and wise. Such women are supposedly savvy enough to appreciate their own wisdom— but, then again, they should want to soften the telltale marks of how many years it took them to acquire it. “I am not using these injectables to look 25...I don’t want to be 25. I just want to look like me.”

-Alex Kuczynski in her book 'Beauty Junkies' calls these appeals “the new feminism, an activism of aesthetics.” That ignores the work of feminists from Susan Faludi to Susan Bordo, who have argued for years against the global beauty industry and its misogynistic practices. Ironically, the term “feminist” has long been wielded by right-wing politicians, comedians and talk-show hosts as a pejorative label for a “masculine” woman who “lets herself go.” Yet the cosmetic surgery industry is doing exactly what the beauty industry has done for years: It’s co-opting, repackaging and reselling the feminist call to empower women into what may be dubbed “consumer feminism.” Under the dual slogans of possibility and choice, producers, promoters and providers are selling elective surgery as self-determination.

-The cosmetic-medicine industry also appeals to the power of sisterhood. The blurb for a popular book entitled The Smart Woman’s Guide to Plastic Surgery describes the author, Jean M. Loftus, as a female plastic surgeon who will offer “compassionate advice for...any woman considering plastic surgery.” Similarly, the cover of the Internet Guide to Cosmetic Surgery for Women sports a collage of women’s faces of various ethnicities, suggesting that the reader is in this with her sisters. Women with supposed insider knowledge give other women advice and support on how to revamp their faces and bodies through surgery. (Does this make them “aesthetic activists”?) The implication is that the male physician, advertiser, network producer or cosmetic-medicine mogul has been sidestepped, and women are empowering each other to be more informed consumers.

-Moreover, much of the media covering cosmetic surgery centers on the idea of choice... just another lifestyle choice with little difference from working out and eating well, Cosmetic Surgery for Dummies promises the reader will discover how to “decide whether surgery is right for you,” “find a qualified surgeon,” “set realistic expectations,” “evaluate the costs,” “make the surgical environment safe” and ultimately “make an informed choice.” The word “choice” obviously plays on reproductive-rights connotations, so that consumers will trust that they are maintaining autonomy over their bodies. Yet one choice goes completely unmentioned: The choice not to consider cosmetic surgery at all.

-It seems that this pseudo-feminist message works. A British survey found that over half of the 1,000 women who were polled (average age 34) expect to have cosmetic surgery in their lifetime. And that’s music to the ears of all those who benefit from women’s insecurities about their looks, for cosmetic surgery is big, big business.

-Cosmetic surgery is now being packaged and sold in conjunction with other leisure activities for “smart” women. In every major U.S. city, there are “medi-spas” offering one-stop beauty shopping, from salon treatments to outpatient surgical procedures, including chemical peels and injectables such as Restylane . A company called Surgeon & Safari puts together medical tourism packages to South Africa that include airfare, hotel, meals, breast enlargement, a face-lift and a week at a wild-animal game reserve.

-Within such a marketplace, some cosmetic surgeons are no longer just doctors: They are vendors. Thanks to a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, all physicians may openly advertise their wares, and cosmetic surgeons have become particularly adept at working with professional marketing consultants to brand and promote their practices.

-To boost sales even further, cosmetic medical equipment and injectables are being sold to physicians who aren’t even cosmetic surgeons. One Maryland college professor found that out during her annual Pap smear appointment, when her gynecologist offered to “take care of her elevens”—unknit the “teacher’s frown” between her brows—with Botox.

-The beauty industry has long traded on women’s body angst and low self-esteem as a means of creating permanent customers. With consumers able to “choose” from among a dizzying array of procedures and providers, even the most minute areas of the female body are potential sites of worry and “intervention.”

-With the media’s suggestion that cosmetic surgery for the discriminating consumer is almost as easy as choosing any beauty product, it’s not surprising that the targeted demographic for cosmetic medical procedures has widened.

-While the vast majority of customers continue to be Caucasian women, “ethnic surgeries” are also on the rise. Eyelid surgery that remakes eyes from ovals to orbs is one of the top three cosmetic procedures for Asian Americans. The No. 1 procedure for African Americans was rhinoplasty to slim wide noses, and at the top of the list for Hispanics were breast implants to mold cleavage into a “standard” shape and size. The media pressures every woman—regardless of class, age or ethnicity—to modify herself in order to feel “normal.”

-The most graphic consequences of these trends are the stretched, alien, expressionless faces worn by certain celebrities and increasing numbers of “everyday” women. There are also the disfigurements and deaths that can result from surgeries gone wrong. While the ASPS keeps no statistics on botched procedures, permanent scars, severe reactions to injectables, burst implants or deaths due to hospitalacquired infections or administration of too much anesthesia, the stories certainly exist. Indeed, Kuczynski devotes an entire chapter to “The Fatal Quest for Beauty.”

But then Kuczynski ends her string of horrific examples by telling consumers to “educate themselves.” Time and again, even critical assessments of cosmetic surgery conclude in this way. Rather than grapple with the hard questions of whether such surgeries should be undertaken at all, or what the cultural forces are behind the pressures to undergo cosmetic surgery, even critical voices ultimately reaffirm the industry’s message: If the woman is an empowered consumer, she will be smart enough to shop safe. Ultimately, both promoters and detractors keep the question of choice to whether a woman will choose to do her homework, listen to other women and not overreach.

At the end of Beauty Junkies, Kuczynski asserts that “looks are the new feminism.” Yet it's feminists who have emphatically and persistently shown that cosmetic medicine exists because sexism is powerfully linked with capitalism— keeping a woman worried about her looks in order to stay attractive, keep a job or retain self-worth. To say that a preoccupation with looks is “feminist” is a cynical misreading; feminists must instead insist that a furrowed, “wise” brow—minus the fillers—is the empowered feminist face, both old and new.

For further information on feminists challenging cosmetic surgery, visit NOW, loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org; About- Face, www.about-face.org; and the Real Women Project, www.realwomenproject.com.

10 Things Plastic Surgeons Won't Tell You

2009-06-05T23:25:00.005-04:00

1. “I trained a whole weekend to learn this procedure.”

With skyrocketing malpractice premiums and the Kafkaesque insurance system, it’s little wonder M.D.’s are flocking to the plastic surgery biz. It’s easy to get into (legally, any doctor can do it), patients pay up front for surgery, and demand is up: The number of cosmetic procedures increased 59 percent from 2000 to 2007, making it a $12.4-billiona- year industry.

The best surgeons spend years honing their chops in residencies; by contrast, those hoping to offer a little Botox along with flu shots tend to opt for less rigorous training—like the popular weekend classes at the International Society of Cosmetogynecology, an odd but official-sounding organization that promotes plastic surgery as an extension of gynecology. Its three-day courses cover liposuction and injectables. Empire Medical Training offers an even thriftier nine-hour seminar on lipo—two hours of which are devoted to marketing.

Real plastic surgeons are appalled. “Any licensed physician can put up a plaque and say they do plastic surgery regardless of training, and that’s scary,” says Roxanne Guy, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

2. “I make a mint off other surgeons’ mistakes.”

When 35-year-old Kelley Young of Fresno, Calif., looks at her wedding photos, all she can see is her plastic surgery disaster: Young’s nose is bent to one side and its tip is misshapen. “Those photos just look ugly, ugly all over,” she says. Later, when Young went back to her doctor for a fix, he tried snapping her nose back into place—without anesthetic. A year later she finally found a competent plastic surgeon to fix the problem.

Young is hardly alone. In fact, she’s part of a new growth area in the field: fixing botched cosmetic procedures. According to a survey by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, one in five nose jobs are corrections of a failed procedure. Stanley Frileck, an associate clinical professor of plastic surgery at UCLA, says that 35 percent of his work is fixing the mistakes of other surgeons. Botched rhinoplasty, face-lifts, and eyebrow procedures are the most common. Not only are these repairs more complex than the initial surgery but they can cost up to three times as much, Frileck says—and the result is never quite as good as a welldone procedure would have been in the first place.

3. “Sure, I can turn back the clock, but it just starts ticking again.”

Just because you shelled out $10,000 for a face-lift doesn’t mean you’re set for life. Even the most skillful work will need some attention a decade or two down the line. Some jobs may require supplemental fillers (compounds that are injected under wrinkle lines in the skin) or minor surgery to tighten up a few sags, while others could call for a repeat of the same procedure. “All cosmetic surgery has a life span,” says Richard D’Amico, president elect of the ASPS. “Procedures will not last forever.”

Surgery to tighten droopy eyelids, for example, often needs to be revisited after a decade, and any work on the lower face will age more quickly than that on the upper face, since the lower face is fleshier and has less bone for sagging jowls to hang onto. Breast implants are the most predictable: Like any foreign objects in the body, they’ll eventually be surrounded by scar tissue, which can make breasts hard and painful. That’s why every decade or two, depending on the patient, most implants need to be replaced. While 300,000 women receive implants annually, 25,000 have them removed. “It’s strictly a function of time,” Frileck says.

4. “You’d be better off spending this money on a good therapist.”

Plastic surgery doesn’t make you crazy, but those who have had it, both men and women, are more likely to suffer from psychological problems. Several studies in the mid-1990s found that women who chose to get breast implants were two to three times more likely to commit suicide; other studies have found that 20 percent of plastic surgery patients have undergone some form of psychological treatment.

Up to 15 percent of plastic surgery patients suffer from “body dysmorphic disorder (BDD),” marked by obsessive and exaggerated concern over aspects of one’s appearance. It may sound like a convenient diagnosis for our beautyobsessed culture, but it is a very real, very dangerous condition, says David Sarwer, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “At the extreme, people will not leave their home, they’re so preoccupied with how they look,” Sarwer says. BDD sufferers often seek plastic surgery hoping it will magically transform their lives, and when it doesn’t, they may harm themselves. Every plastic surgeon worth his salt asks probing questions to gauge patients’ motives, but to date there’s no standardized screening tool for BDD.

5. “Of course I’m board certified—for what that’s worth.”

A board-certified plastic surgeon should be the best, right? Not always. Because any doctor can perform any cosmetic procedure, and because certification boards are self-regulating, many certifications aren’t so telling. The American Board of Laser Surgery, for example, certifies nurses, veterinarians, and oral surgeons in laser surgery— through a take-home written exam. Meanwhile, two different boards certify practitioners of “mesotherapy,” the use of injections to dissipate cellulite, although there’s little evidence to suggest it works. “To say you’re ‘board-certified’ is meaningless,” says Michael McGuire, of the ASPS.

There are some certifications that matter: The American Board of Plastic Surgery is the most rigorous for this specialty and the only certification body for plastic surgery recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. Members of the ABPS have completed residencies in both general surgery and plastic surgery and are trained to do all procedures from liposuction to nose jobs. Likewise, physicians with board certifications in either otolaryngology or in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery also have reliable training in procedures above the collarbone.

6. “You can get this done for a fraction of the cost overseas.”

When Janette McNeal decided to get some work done, the Tulsa, Okla., homemaker balked at the $10,000 cost of a faceand neck-lift. McNeal decided to look overseas, and wound up having surgery in Malaysia, where the same $10,000 bought her the face-lift plus liposuction in three areas, a tummy tuck, and an eyelid lift.

It’s not for everyone, but “medical tourism” is less risky than it used to be. Since 2000, Joint Commission International, the international wing of an organization that accredits U.S. hospitals, has okayed 110 facilities overseas. Also, private companies that do their own screening have sprung up to guide patients through the process. One of those, MedRetreat, visits each hospital it uses and guarantees that the best surgeons will be on the case.

But medical tourism still has its hazards. It can be tough determining doctors’ qualifications, and eager patients may try to cram in too many surgeries at once, requiring a longer recovery and boosting the chance of lethal blood clots, a risk already increased by flying. Travel following surgery can also up the possibility of infection. And if something goes wrong, well, forget a malpractice suit.

7. “I make my living off the fat of the land—literally.”

The number of Americans who lose 100 pounds or more is increasing. But dropping the weight is just part of the process; next comes what’s known as body contouring. After a person loses so much weight, his skin does not snap back, leaving folds of excess skin on his thighs, back, torso, abdomen, and neck, which can cause rashes and make fitting into clothes and exercising problematic. In many cases the extra skin must be removed through extreme versions of mastopexy (or breast lifts), tummy tucks, and other procedures. And there are often complications: The remaining damaged skin can die or separate after the procedure, requiring additional surgeries. Despite all the problems, body-contouring surgery is increasingly popular; between 2004 and 2007, the number of procedures increased by 20 percent, to nearly 67,000.

After Michele Fitch, a teacher in Melbourne, Fla., lost 190 pounds, she waited eight years to have the follow-up surgery. She wanted to make sure she could keep the weight off, and she needed to save money—insurance often pays for the gastric bypass, but it rarely covers contouring. First she had skin removed from her arms and chest. Then 10 pounds of skin was cut from her sternum to her bikini line and from hip to hip. Out-ofpocket cost to date: $33,000. And Fitch still faces two more surgeries on her legs.

8. “Long-term effects? Beats me.”

More than most other specialists, plastic surgeons are under pressure to compete with one another, and an easy way to get the upper hand is to offer all the latest technology. “There is great pressure for physicians to jump on the bandwagon of a new filler or technique before it is really evaluated,” McGuire says. “And their ethics are not too high to begin with.”

Doctors are often happy to try new techniques before the long-term effects are known, and in some cases they’re performing procedures that already have poor track records. Injecting a person’s own fat from other areas into her breasts for enlargement is on its way to popularity again. When this was tried years ago, much of the fat died, causing unsightly rippling and lumps. But that wasn’t the worst of it: The tiny calcifications that resulted from the dead fat were easily confused with tumors and rendered mammograms less effective. While some argue that new techniques and better mammograms have eliminated these problems, McGuire is certain that this rush to the latest and greatest will once again produce disastrous consequences.

9. “Silicone’s back—and putting my kid s through college!”

Fifteen years after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned them for elective use and after massive class-action lawsuits bankrupted their manufacturer, silicone breast implants have gotten the green light again. Though there’s no conclusive evidence that silicone from ruptured implants causes the problems once associated with it, the FDA is staying cautious, recommending that patients undergo a long list of expensive follow-up tests over the long term. Due to concern about leaks, the FDA has required labeling that instructs those with the implants to get MRIs to check for ruptures after three years, then once every two years after that. Silicone implants should also be replaced every 10 years.

There’s no actual mandate for these procedures, and some doctors say that patients won’t follow through, especially once they start tallying the bill: The initial surgery can cost between $5,000 and $10,000; MRIs are about $1,500 apiece, and you’ll need four over a decade; and the replacement surgery can cost about as much as the original procedure. Grand total: between $11,000 and $16,000 every 10 years.

10. “Those who need surgery the most will benefit from it the least.”

Most people turn to plastic surgery when they feel age has finally caught up with them and nothing else will rid them of that troublesome bulge. But the dirty little secret of plastic surgery is that with many procedures, the more you need it, the less you can expect.

Those who have damaged skin, more common as we age, can expect some serious complications. Skin stretched by weight gain, for example, loses its elasticity; following liposuction it may not snap back into place but hang like an apron over the area that was suctioned. Because smokers have poor circulation to the epidermis, their skin can die after surgery, meaning months of unsightly scars and possible additional surgery. And procedures such as a face-lift done on sun-damaged skin won’t last as long and may result in more-prominent scarring. Likewise, those hoping for dramatic weight loss from liposuction are looking in the wrong place; surgeons say it’s meant only to shape a certain part of the body in conjunction with diet and exercise.

Ironically, those who need cosmetic surgery the least—generally, those who are younger and opt for a little tweaking here and there—are going to fare the best. “How well a person cares for themselves throughout life is very important,” says Mark Jewell, former president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

AwfulPlasticSurgery.com - Just plain awful

2009-05-30T17:54:00.008-04:00

During the past few weeks, I have received email from 5 different people who tried posting responses on Awful Plastic Surgery only to have their messages deleted or not go through at all. I know they are telling the truth, because my own messages appeared for a minute and then were deleted.

This site seems to be a favorite place for my sister to spew her venomous lies, yet when I posted cold, hard evidence proving her lies, the site administrator deleted them. Why? One poster who frequents that site expressed her anger to me at being duped this way. She isn't alone. Apparently, the site enjoys the traffic generated by my sister's bizarre messages, but would rather not have her falsehoods revealed.

They certainly get lots of mileage out of my misfortune. One hoped they would have the decency to publish my posts.. and ALL posts shedding a true light on the issue at hand. Those who wrote to me were disgusted and said they no longer want to participate in its discussions. Perhaps if their stats go down, they might take a more fair and balanced position.

Visit LosingFace.org

Saying Good Bye to my Best Friend

2009-05-27T10:31:00.001-04:00

Shortly after 5:00 pm today, my vet will make a house call to euthanize my beloved companion, Sierra. For the past 5 years, this loyal, loving cocker spaniel has shared every moment of my life… has given me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.. has consoled me through the worst physical and emotional devastation. Now she is dying. Tonight my vet will ease her passage from this life and take away her warm body.. a body which has lain beside me as my loyal guardian, healer of my heart, keeper of my soul. Sierra will be gone before the sun sets tonight, leaving a void in my life that can never be filled again. One thing I can say with complete certainty of my life…my dogs have shown me what true unconditional love is all about. If not for Sierra, I would have given up long ago. Sierra has given me the most precious gift possible when I most needed it.

I cannot even imagine what tomorrow will be without her.

First moments with Sierra 9/2004

Christmas with Sierra 2006

Allergan hit with 'Botox deaths' suit

2009-05-18T00:34:00.001-04:00

This lawsuit was filed last year. Anyone know what happened?

Several Botox users and their relatives filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Orange County, Calif, contending that the drug injured them or killed their relatives. They blamed maker Allergan Inc for failing to warn them of the dangers.

The suit links the drug to 4 deaths, including a 69-year-old nurse who received Botox injections for neck and shoulder pain, a 7-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who allegedly receivied injections to control limb spasticity, and a 71-year-old woman allegedly got Botox injections for wrinkles around her mouth at a mall clinic, and a New Jersey man who died, the suit contends, as a result of Botox injections.

Three of the deaths allegedly involved off-label uses of Botox.

In addition, the suit says that both approved and unapproved uses of Botox left 12 other plaintiffs with a range of disabilities, including blurred vision, numbness, allergic reactions, flu-like symptoms, muscle weakness, and difficulty breathing.

"Allergan emphasizes that Botox is a miracle drug and has often compared it to 'penicillin,' " the suit says. "Meanwhile, Allergan obscures that Botox is a highly lethal toxin with serious and life-threatening side effects."

Ultimately, what happened to these unfortunate people is a tragedy and a terrible ordeal for their families. However, common sense should also apply in assessing their chances of a clear victory in this case.

For example, say that somebody shot and killed your relative using a Smith & Wesson firearm. Would you sue Smith & Wesson?

From the Los Angeles Times: Allergan failed to warn of dangerous Botox side effects, lawsuit claims:

"Botox is causing major injuries and death, and it's well-documented but not widely known," said Ray Chester, a Texas lawyer who leads a nationwide team of lawyers involved in the suit. "So thousands of people are getting these injections with no warnings to speak of. Then they fall ill with serious illnesses and, in some cases, they are not even aware that it's the Botox that caused it."

Hurt by Economy, Plastic Surgeons Find Hope in New Products

2009-05-07T10:25:00.009-04:00

Always looking for new ways to suck you in.

One way or another, they will find ways to exploit and capitalize on our insecurities and mutilate our self-esteem.

Liposuction needle display

Flesh-cutting tools

LAS VEGAS — They can lift breasts and firm up thighs, but the nation’s cosmetic surgeons admit they are powerless over a sagging economy.

And yet, hope is rising, along with the Dow, what with the first competitor to Botox just approved last week and potentially revolutionary new treatments on the horizon, including stem cell injections and a cream that can remove unwanted facial lines.

“Business has definitely been flat,” Dr. Brian Kinney, a Los Angeles surgeon, said at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, which concludes here Thursday. “I can think of a particular woman who said in October she wanted a facelift but she said, ‘Well, I need to sell a house because I want to make sure I’m secure.’ And then she told me in March she was still waiting, the real estate market’s down.”

The number of cosmetic procedures in the United States last year fell 12.3 percent from 2007, to just over 10.2 million, according to the organization. That is a setback for a business that had seen unabated growth since 1997, when about two million procedures took place.

The biggest growth area has been nonsurgical procedures, owing largely to the success of Botox, a botulinum toxin that works by numbing and relaxing facial muscles that create wrinkles. Yet the company that markets Botox, Allergan Inc., is bracing for new competition now that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the second botulinum toxin for similar use, Dysport, produced by the French drugmaker Ipsen Biopharm Ltd.

“Everybody is excited about it because it’s the first competitor to Botox in seven years,” said Dr. Z. Paul Lorenc, who practices in Manhattan and who views Dysport as a faster-acting, longer-lasting and potentially less-expensive option. “It’s also a softer look.”

Also pending are studies into topical versions of these muscle-numbing medications, although none are expected to come to market for years. Already, though, doctors here are debating how useful or practical it might be.

“There’s a concern that if you were to give the patient the cream to take home, they’d just keep putting more and more and more on, and you’d have a dosing problem,” Dr. Kinney said. “And patients might start putting it on other places, like around the mouth, and then they might not be able to move their mouths properly.”

Stem cell treatments were on the minds of many as well, although the potential applications are vague. The thinking seems to be that doctors may some day be able to extract stem cells from a patient’s own fat and use them in lieu of breast implants to produce self-regenerative tissue that would provide a more natural feel than silicon-gel or saline, now the standard. No one is sure yet if it will work and several doctors voiced concern as to whether it is safe and how they would be able to regulate the tissue growth.

Another potential growth area is in nonwhite patients, who have long been underserved said Dr. Julius W. Few, a surgeon from Chicago who lectured at the conference on how to provide nose jobs for non-Caucasian patients while preserving their ethnicity.

“We know by our statistics that this is a growing group by interest in plastic surgery,” said Dr. Few, who performs as many as 40 nose jobs a year on nonwhite patients. “Being African-American, when I was growing up, it was said at my house and a lot of other houses that plastic surgery was only for wealthy white people. That seemed unfair to me.”

The four-day event was a serious medical conference of nearly 2,500 practitioners and exhibitors attending live demonstrations, listening to debates over newer techniques and browsing countless models of implants and needles that were on display.

Still, the convention offered provocative sessions like “137 Rhinoplasties in 20 Patients: What Went Wrong?” “The Weird Smile After Facelift Surgery: A Dynamic Investigation”. (My note: "Dynamic Investigation"? Who are they kidding? How do they "investigate" mistakes they refuse to admit they make? In all the years I have been reading plastic surgery journals, the last articles published about bad outcomes which actually involved the VICTIMS in such studies was in the late 1980's. How can surgeons properly investigate "what went wrong" when surgeons who perform botched operations do not accurately describe what they actually did in operative reports. Are these "investigators" bringing the actual damaged PATIENTS before a group of their peers to examine and discuss methods and techniques which may be responsible for these bad outcomes? Of course not! I challenge any surgeon to prove otherwise. Even in academic settings, this is not done. They do it with photos. They lie to each other. There is no such thing as rational, scientific investigation of bad outcomes in plastic surgery. It simply does not exist. Why? Because proper investigation would mean involving the PATIENT...the very person they will call "crazy" or say suffers from BDD rather than admit they made a mistake.)

Doctors at the conference hoped to get out the message that they were far from the stereotypes of predatory practitioners who take advantage of patients’ insecurities. They resent portrayals like that from a “Sex and the City” episode in which Samantha Jones, played by Kim Catrall is worried about aging and wants a small operation but is told by a physician that she ought to consider several other procedures. She eventually decides on “aging gracefully.”

Of the fictional surgeon’s behavior, Dr. Robert Singer of San Diego said, “That never happens.” Dr. Singer added: “I generally will turn that question in a different way when a patient asks me what I think she needs done. It’s not a matter of what I say. It’s what bothers you.”

Dr. Singer said that part of the challenge was managing patient expectations.

“The public wants something that has essentially no down time, that has maximum improvement, that is non-invasive, that has no discomfort and that has no cost,” Dr. Singer said. “They want magic. That magic pill doesn't exist.”

Gold plated instruments - Bought with suckers' $$$

Patient as Teacher

2009-04-19T20:37:00.003-04:00

A reminder to doctors and patients alike regarding the experimental nature of many new procedures. The surgeon does NOT always know more about certain techniques than the patient who is living with the outcome. The relevant question here: Is he willing to learn from his patients? More important: Is he willing to treat the "teacher-patient" with the respect she deserves, or does he stash the knowledge of his error away for the benefit of future patients while attempting to convince the "teacher-patient" that there is "nothing wrong"?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Post-Meeting “Wear-You-Out” Syndrome in Cosmetic Surgery
PLASTIC AND RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY, September 15, 2001
Rod J. Rohrich, M.D.
Dallas, Texas

Events occur every day within a practice that can literally “wear you out.” Life can seem hard at times, even when all is well. At this time in my life, with a toddler and an infant at home, it has become even more important to minimize those events that disrupt my day. We hope we can learn from each other’s mistakes to find solutions for the everyday practice of plastic surgery. However, patients with unrealistic expectations are only one part of our daily challenge. What’s frustrating and perplexing is when a technique is presented at an educational meeting (intentionally or unintentionally) that sounds appealing, yet is filled with potential problems when incorporated into our practices. We return home to try the new procedures only to discover they really do not work. The result is the “wear-you-out” syndrome: a dissatisfied patient wearing you out with an unforeseen postoperative problem from a procedure that was supposed to work well by all reports.

At our national meetings, one occasionally hears about techniques that have an incredibly steep learning curve and probably do not work, and if they do work, the results are unexpected, sometimes surprising, and often not consistently reproducible. It is difficult to incorporate new procedures into your practice if you do not have the same experience and expertise as the individual who presented this new technique or refinement. If the presenter fails to clearly define the learning curve or explain the number and percentage of complications, this can pave the way for big problems. For instance, the surgeon who has just learned to perform liposuction or a face lift technique cannot immediately incorporate some advanced technique into his/her practice just by watching an expert present the procedure. We should attempt to make this clear in our teaching courses.

Everybody shows his or her best results and many minimize the complication rate and learning curve at meetings, seminars, and symposia. Perhaps this is human nature, but it is not acceptable. Even though a procedure has been demonstrated time and time again, it is not proper to minimize its risks and complications. Do not tell us it works every time. In my own experience, the role and use of fat injections in facial cosmetic surgery is a classic example. Fat injections have been touted to b the cure-all, end-all for all types of problems,
especially facial aging. My personal experience with the use of facial fat grafts and fat injections has been dismal, particularly when using fat injections for orbital rim blending of the cheek-lid interface. The results from this technique have worn me out from the perspective of patient complaints.

A word of caution: do not go home and incorporate a new procedure into your arsenal until you are very sure it works. Here are several thoughts to help avoid the post-meeting “wear-you-out” syndrome in your practice:
1. Do not be the first to use a new technique or technology or the last to give it up.

2. Be sure highly respected, experienced surgeons or a surgeon you know and trust is using and praising the procedure or technique before you attempt it.

3. Seek advice from the surgeon with the most experience and expertise using the same or similar techniques.

4. Call the surgeon who described the technique and put him/her under scrutiny. Does this really work? When does it not work? What are the author’s revision and complication rates?

5. Optimally, observe the new technique or rejuvenation procedure. See if the actual procedure is the same as presented. Ask to see follow-up patients if possible.

6. After you have performed 5 to 10 procedures using the new technique or technology, provide the author with your own feedback and follow-up on what works and does not work for you.

7. Listen to your patients and follow them closely when you change a procedure or add a new technique to your armamentarium. Ask the hard questions. Is this new technique really improving your results?

8. Beware of the technique that continues to be “modified” significantly, especially 1 year after its introduction as the latest and greatest in plastic surgery. Obviously, something is not working properly if it requires constant revision even in the hands of the “experts”!

9. Be wary of those who are never in doubt when asked about a procedure they are advocating. They may often be in error.

10. Most complications relative to a new technique or technology occur within 2 to 3 weeks after an educational meeting. This is a very important statistic to remember!

In conclusion, do you find that your patients are “wearing you out” about their result from a procedure you are trying? If so, stop! Do not take everything you hear at a meeting as established fact. Analyze your results, compare them to old and new techniques, and formulate a plan that works best for you and your patients.

Rod J. Rohrich, M.D.
Co-editor, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
UT Southwestern Medical Center
5323 Harry Hines Boulevard, Suite E7.210
Dallas, Texas 75390-9132
rod.rohrich@utsouthwestern.edu

~~~~~~~~~~~~

What does this article really say? To me, it indicates a duplicity amongst plastic surgeons about the real complication rates involved in certain techniques and procedures employed in cosmetic surgery. If they can lie, whether unintentionally or otherwise, to each other, where does that place the patient suffering with the botched results?

The Cruel & Ugly Truth about Botox

2009-03-14T13:41:00.005-04:00

Sign the petition:
Tell Allergan that Animals Should Not Die for BOTOX

Read more about the inhumane killing of helpless creatures:
Dark Side of Beauty: BOTOX Kills Animals

More victims come forward in sexual abuse case against plastic surgeon

2009-02-07T00:42:00.008-05:00

This story exemplifies the tendency of victims to remain silent. Only when other women came forward were the majority of these victims compelled to tell their stories. How many victims remain silent forever, allowing these sexual predators to continue their abuse? It takes courage to be the first to blow the whistle, and too often, it isn't worth the additional trauma victims suffer through public exposure.

Since the arrest of surgeon Peter Chi on Wednesday on charges of sexual abuse, more women claiming to be his victims have come forward to tell their stories.

STOCKTON — At least 26 women now say that a Tracy plastic surgeon sexually abused them during surgery or exams, investigators say.

The number has more than tripled since Wednesday, when 46-year-old Peter Chi of Livermore was arrested on charges that he raped or otherwise sexually abused several women. Since his arrest was announced, 18 more victims have come forward alleging sexual assault by the owner of Beauty Renewed, 1770 Tracy Blvd.

He faces 11 felony counts of sexual abuse, including three counts of rape by a foreign object.

A judge at Chi’s first arraignment Thursday ordered the doctor to stay away from his medical office and see no more patients at least until next week, when the court will consider whether to suspend his medical license. Chi also surrendered his passport in court and is free after posting $100,000 bail.

Chi will likely spend time in state prison and register for life as a sex offender, police said.

He showed up to court three minutes before his scheduled hearing with his wife and bondsman, his head held high, his demeanor upbeat in front of a crush of cameras and the presence of at least two victims and their families.

Despite the order to stop seeing patients, San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Roger Ross allowed Chi to keep his medical license for the time being and issued a gag order to prevent anyone officially involved in the case from speaking to the public or the media.

Since investigators on Wednesday filed the first complaint charging the doctor with having molested eight women since late 2007, a slew of new victims have contacted police, according to Tracy police Detective Nate Cogburn.

Police said that in some cases, nurses watched Chi molest his patients, telling them it was part of the procedure, and at other times no one but the patient and doctor were in the room.

Tom Rios, the husband of one victims who attended Thursday’s hearing, said to news cameras that knowledge of his wife’s abuse has been a burden. Seeing Chi in person made him angry, he said, but relieved that the allegations against him are being seriously considered.

"It’s a weight that I had to carry around all this time," he said of his wife’s abuse. "Any man wants to protect his family."

Rios said the doctor’s license should have been confiscated this week.

Deputy Attorney General Jessica Amgwerd unsuccessfully argued for the judge to suspend Chi’s license to practice.

"I think the public demands protection," Amgwerd said. "Basically, Dr. Chi turned his patients into victims."

Image
A judge on Thursday barred Peter Chi, a surgeon in Tracy, to stay out of his Tracy office. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press
Ross told her that it’s enough for now that Chi stays away from his practice, even the administrative office. Investigators said he took some patient files to his Livermore home. With that in mind, if allowed access to his office, Chi could tamper with evidence, Amgwerd argued.

The doctor’s story

Chi has performed upward of 5,000 surgeries since he started practicing medicine more than a decade ago, according to his Web site. He is a board-certified ear, nose and throat doctor and plastic surgeon. He studied medicine in Canada before moving to California to practice.

Chi nearly had his license revoked in 2008, when he found a cancerous cyst on the neck of a 59-year-old man at Sutter Tracy Community Hospital but failed to tell him about it, according to the California Medical Board. It took an exam by another doctor for the patient to find out he had cancer.

The petition alleged malpractice and charged Chi with "gross negligence," because he failed to share the results with the patient.

Chi also has three malpractice settlements on his record from recent years. Only 5 percent of physicians in his field have settlements to their name.

He was exempted from appearing at his next hearing, in which the possible suspension of his medical license will be discussed, at 8:30 a.m. Feb. 13 in Department 26 of the Stockton courthouse. His next arraignment is scheduled for mid-March.

At least two of Chi’s accusers have hired attorneys who are preparing to file civil lawsuit since the story went public.

One accuser is a Tracy woman in her early 40s and one of the 18 who called police after she saw the publicized reports about Chi.

She hired the surgeon in November for a steep discount to perform liposuction on her arms and stomach, but during the operations and post-operative exams, Chi massaged her vaginal area without gloves for 15 to 20 minutes, telling her it was part of the procedure, said Stockton attorneys Stewart Tabak and Steve Brown.

The woman said the infection from her procedure worsened , which could mean Tabak and Brown could bring up charges of malpractice in addition to the accusations of criminal conduct.

Another woman, identified in the original complaint against Chi as "Yvette Doe," 46, said she thought about hiring an attorney back in September 2007, when she said Chi molested her. But she thought she was the only victim and had little confidence about going ahead with a lawsuit. When she heard about other women sharing similar stories about Chi, she said she felt vindicated.

Tabak and Brown said the number of women claiming abuse could portend many more lawsuits in the near future.

The criminal charges "adds an incredible amount of strength to the civil case," Tabak said. "Our client felt a huge level of vindication when she heard other women had the same story. Before, she was very questioning."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Life Before and After

2009-01-26T13:31:00.001-05:00

Then and Now

Surgery photos at center of suit against doctor, TV station

2009-01-15T22:25:00.004-05:00

An Eden woman has sued a Salt Lake City television station and her plastic surgeon for airing edited photographs of her in the nude.

Coni Judge's lawsuit filed this week in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City claim Dr. Renato Saltz sent KSTU Channel 13 news her naked "before and after" surgery photos from her medical file without her knowledge or permission. Read more>

Crimes like this are not rare. They happen every day.

2009-01-13T19:00:00.004-05:00

Medical Crime Dr Timothy W Wild Kaiser Permanente Jupirena Stein Halvorson

Doctors Bemoan the Fall of Plastic Surgery

2009-01-02T18:48:00.004-05:00

Celebrity backlash and low economy are bringing the institution of plastic surgery down.
(...and it couldn't happen to a more deserving medical specialty)

Cosmetic surgery, or vanity surgery, as it’s often been called, has undoubtedly shaped the society and the culture we know today. While the phenomenon is mostly encountered, or more meditated, in the US, it is not limited in any way to it. As a matter of fact, we often hear mentions of the past ten years or so as to the “era of the mass medicalization of attractiveness.” An era that is dangerously nearing its end, plastic surgeons all over the world are now saying.

Although it was somehow to be expected for plastic surgery to take a massive hit because of the international crisis, no one in the industry expected to see celebrities themselves, the very persons who helped build it up, gang up against it. Yet, they did, US surgeons are lamenting on personal blogs, and the consequences of their actions spell disaster for a segment of the industry that, no earlier than a couple of years ago, was positively thriving.

Actresses Courteney Cox and Lisa Rinna, both once suspected to flirt with Botox and lip fillers, are now speaking up against these beautification methods. Dubbed “unsatisfying” and “too plastic,” what were once favorite procedures amongst stars are falling to ridicule. Moreover, the celebrity backlash is just one facet of the problem that the industry of plastic surgery is dealing with and the numbers for the past year speak volume in this sense.

“In Orange County, where plastic surgery is a part of their culture, doctors told me business is down 30 to 40 percent,” Thomas Seery, the president of RealSelf, a site devoted to reviewing vanity-oriented medical procedures, says. “That tells me something is fundamentally changing there.” And it’s not just in the OC that figures are dwindling, but all over the US, a fact that also became painfully obvious at the most recent American Society of Plastic Surgeons meeting held in Chicago, where, for a first in many, many years, doctors announced openings and even their availability to negotiate fees with patients.

“Cosmetic surgery is going to become the new S.U.V., something that you can do without, that is less justifiable for you and your family,” concludes Dr. Pitts-Taylor, author of “Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture,” cited in a NY Times piece called “Putting Vanity on Hold.” By all means, 2009 does not shape out to be the year of cosmetic surgical interventions, so maybe this is just a good enough time to start thinking of what they say about real beauty coming from within.
~~~
The economic crunch just may turn out to have a silver lining after all.

Class-action Suit Prevails Against 2 Plastic Surgeons in Korea

2008-12-16T01:37:00.002-05:00

DECEMBER 15, 2008 10:08

A group of plastic surgery victims have won the first class-action suit in Korea against plastic surgeons.

The Seoul District Court awarded damages of 100 million won (72,859 U.S. dollars) to 27 patients who suffered severe side effects such as pain, irregularity and asymmetry after receiving calf reduction or partial gastrocnemius muscle resection procedures from two plastic surgeons.

The court ordered the defendants Nov. 19 to pay four million (2,914 dollars) to 5.8 million won (4.225 dollars) to each of 24 plaintiffs.

The suit was filed in March last year after six patients who suffered side effects from calf reduction surgery at a clinic in southern Seoul set up an online café. They sought people with similar cases.

Just two days after the café was set up, more than 70 people joined.

A 40-year-old woman who joined the café in July said, “I feel severe muscle pain under my heels when walking. I especially have sharp pangs in my ankles. I found I wasn’t alone in experiencing severe side effects from plastic surgery after surfing the Internet.”

The Web community now has about 2,500 members.

Calf reduction or partial gastrocnemius muscle resection procedure reduces gastrocnemius muscles to make thinner and longer calves.

The cosmetic surgery clinic received two million (1,457 dollars) to three million won (2,185 dollars) for non-incisional calf reduction, which reduces muscle bulk in the calf, and partial resection of gastrocnemius muscle by using ultrasonic waves.

Medical experts warn that both procedures can cause severe forms of neuralgia, a disease whose chief symptom is neural pain.

Dr. Yang Jong-yun, head of anesthesiology and pain medicine at Korea University Ansan Hospital, said, “Procedures that kill nerve cells that do not cause harmful effects, including inflammation, should be avoided. If doctors perform plastic surgery, they should explain the adverse side effects that could ensue.”

The court said in a statement that the hospital failed to properly warn the patients of the possible side effects and blamed the two plastic surgeons for malpractice.

One of the defendants appealed the decision, saying the other surgeon was responsible.

An attorney for the defendants said, “This class-action lawsuit suggests that victims are more likely to win a class-action lawsuit than an individual would in medical malpractice lawsuits.”

Kang Tae-eon, director-general at the civic group Consolidation for Medical Consumer, said, “Most medical malpractice in cosmetic and plastic surgery are not likely to lead to direct lawsuits due to the small amounts of money at stake, the time needed, and the cost of filing a lawsuit.”

“Since the class-action suit can save costs for filing a lawsuit and have a significant impact on future cases, similar lawsuits for medical malpractice are likely to follow.”

The civic group also said the historic ruling could deter plastic surgeons from performing reckless cosmetic surgery.

Message about my videos on You Tube

2008-12-02T08:56:00.009-05:00

Every so often I receive a private message which serves to make the Hell of my life worth the effort it takes to continue for another day. In the face of being ridiculed by members of my own family, alienated by all but a few close friends and demeaned by those in the medical profession most able to help me, I ask myself each day: Why don't I end this nightmare now?

Then I receive a message like this and have my answer:

moooingcow has sent you a message on YouTube:

botched surgery

I feel for you and totally understand how some medical professionals are harsh and unsympathetic. I had a terrible accident in 1992 where it left adhesions in my intestines and nothing would show up in the tests but I would end up in the ER with excruciating pain 2-5x per year. It took 15 years to diagnose and they all told me it was in my head. My heart goes out to you. When I saw you doing the tests and they kept saying you had an unobstructed airway, it was making me mad that they could not see that you were obviously having trouble with the airway. There is probably so much scar tissue that doesn't show up in your tests and who knows what else lost it's nerve conduction. You'll never have one surgeon say another made a mistake. I KNOW that from experience. I only hope you can find some relief and some how find a doctor to fix or relieve the problem. Some problems like mine and not fixable, but they are manageable. I hope you have some luck. You're in my prayers. Hang in there. If you can educate others you could be saving many others from a life of hell. Thank you for the videos.

Cheers,
Laura aka Moooingcow

Intimidation in the medical industry

2008-11-22T00:00:00.005-05:00

CBC, Canada’s national public radio and television broadcaster, presents some of the best investigative reporting today. Intimidation by Pharmaceutical Companies uncovers disturbing reports by doctors who have been intimidated by pharmaceutical companies into keeping their discoveries of dangerous and lethal drug side effects quiet.

Intimidation is rampant in every area of medicine today, including cover-ups in the area of cosmetic surgery. Reports of complications related to certain procedures, techniques, and materials used in surgery are under-reported, if reported at all. The focus of this CBC podcast is on drugs, but this kind of intimidation is pervasive in every area of medicine today, especially where the most money is made. Click here to listen to the podcast.

Dying to Be Young

2008-11-19T17:12:00.000-05:00

Link

ABC News: Cosmetic Surgery Desperation and Depression

2008-11-19T17:05:00.000-05:00

Link

What keeps me going...

2008-11-02T09:07:00.003-05:00

From: Brigid359 (Original Message) Sent: 10/29/2008 4:41 AM

Dear Lucille,

I came across your story for the first time just a few hours ago (at AwfulPlasticSurgery.com) and since then have been reading through your blog and various other pages connected to your story in a kind of frenzy of shock, frustration, fury, fear, outrage, and deep grief.

I find it astonishing that you've been able to document your journey so thoroughly, sensibly and compellingly considering the extent to which you must be suffering. You will never know just how many people you're helping by doing so but I hope the knowledge that you are helping others, most probably countless others, can be of some solace.

I wish with all my heart that I could remove your pain and suffering and return to you the life that was so cruelly and callously taken from you. Failing that, please know that your eloquence, dignity and astounding courage have touched me deeply and I'll never forget you or your ongoing battle for as long as I live. I'll be walking beside you in spirit as you continue your journey sending you strength, sympathy, and loving kindness all the way.

With admiration and deep respect,

Brigid McKenna

Plastic Surgeons, Not Immune From the Economic Slump, Report a Decline in Cosmetic Procedures

2008-10-29T14:51:00.003-04:00

HOTELS and clothing chains are not the only businesses feeling the pinch from consumers who are cutting back on retail spending.

On Tuesday plastic surgeons reported a significant drop in a range of cosmetic procedures. About 60 percent of plastic surgeons who responded to a questionnaire said they performed fewer cosmetic procedures in the first six months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to an e-mail survey conducted earlier this month by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Read more....

More on patient blacklisting

2008-10-16T12:08:00.006-04:00

Victims of botched cosmetic surgery often end up on the blacklists of surgeons most skilled and qualified to help them. Frequently, it takes years for such patients to realize they have been blacklisted. From "DEADLY MEDICAL PRACTICES" by Trudy Newman:

"There are basically two different stratifications with patients being given a designation of either “high priority” or “low priority.” Patients with a high priority status will receive the best care available. Patients who, unbeknownst to them, receive a low priority status will get only minimal, rationed or experimental care. Patients are under tested and under treated—if they are treated at all. Alternatively, patients with a low priority status may be over tested, but they will be denied proper care or treatment. The patient may find that he is tested to death with the wrong tests being ordered for his condition. Especially vulnerable are those with chronic illnesses, the elderly, and any others whom physicians deem undesirable."

"Patients who dare to question or challenge their doctor’s authority, or the medical treatment that they receive, may find that they become BLACKLISTED ... Physicians demonstrate a stronger allegiance to their colleagues, than they do towards their innocent and trusting patients. Patients with iatrogenic illnesses often become victims of the blacklist. The problems usually start when medical mistakes are made (either intentionally or unintentionally) and denied. Then the lies and cover-up begin. Documents are often modified, falsified, mysteriously disappear, or important information is excluded from the record. Doctors will go to great lengths to avoid being held accountable, and are generally protected by their professional associations. Once the patient is blacklisted he can then expect to be subjected to character assassination from the medical profession. The patient can anticipate being attacked, discredited and demonized. How dare a patient challenge a doctor's authority? To avoid taking any responsibility for their errors, actions or behavior, doctors--and their governing bodies--will often employ the same tactics that communist countries use to quash political dissent. The patient will be labeled "difficult" or "psychiatric." Such pejorative labels are given to divert attention away from the negligent, incompetent or malpracticing doctor. Patients should not take such labels personally, because these labels say more about the physicians than they do about the patients. Blacklisting is not an error. Blacklisting is an intentional act."

"Because a patient is dealing with their doctor in good faith, it will often take a patient several years to realize what is happening. Once the veil has been lifted and the trusting patient realizes that he is being blacklisted, and is no longer in denial, he may initially experience a sense of shame questioning what he did wrong to deserve such treatment. This shame is usually transient, because after careful examination and reflection the patient rightfully realizes that he is truly the victim. Sensitive patients may experience shame for the doctor’s depravity and lack of moral character. The patient will then move on to experience a righteous indignation. Because of the incredible abuse that a patient endures, he will often experience unbelievable pain and intense anger. Unfortunately, patients are often isolated and left to try to deal with this trauma on their own. "

"Patients who pursue the complaint process through the College of Physicians and Surgeons [in Canada- in the US through State Medical Licensing Boards] because of the substandard care that they have received--often find that they are victimized a second time, because their complaints are not dealt with honestly, fairly or objectively. In the letter that outlines the conclusions of the review, the patient may find that he is attacked by the very organization he was petitioning for assistance. Patients discover that there isn’t an independent outlet to correct and resolve physician error or problems. This additional abuse from the complaint process exacerbates the existing trauma and isolation that the patient is already trying to deal with. "

"Because of the medical profession’s CODE OF SILENCE, the public is often unaware of physicians’ corrupt practices of covert rationing and blacklisting patients. Many patients are afraid to speak out about these abuses, because they fear RETALIATION by the medical community. Retaliation is a legitimate fear. Patients will often find emotional healing only when they are able to connect with other patients who are also being abused and bullied by the medical profession. " [ However, emotional healing cannot restore the victim's functional LIFE as denied appropriate medical treatment can. How many blacklisted patients lives could be restored, but are left to suffer and die because the medical profession engages in blacklisting as a normal and accepted practice?]

Health Records Software Allows Patient Blacklisting by "Flagging"

2008-10-15T18:33:00.006-04:00

This is already in use by the Veterans Administration. It may well be a feature of other electronic health record (EHR) software used today.

Patient Blacklisting

2008-10-15T15:50:00.003-04:00

Here is a link to interesting views on patient blacklisting
from the Bioethics Discussion Blog which will have you glued to the screen for hours.

MGH Plastic Surgery - Not interested in learning from "unfavorable outcomes"

2008-10-14T20:53:00.010-04:00

Going through some older files, I happened across a phone message from Dr. James May, cancelling my appointment after suffering severe tissue damage after a rhinoplasty supervised by Dr. Joel Feldman. The rhinoplasty was performed too soon after a facelift, causing massive swelling which permanently stretched and detached the newly forming adhesion of the facelift. Dr. May's message (and Dr. Feldman's inadequate physical examination) exemplify the tendency of these professors of plastic surgery to ignore/discount problematic outcomes. They just sweep the dirt of their mistakes under the rug and move on to the next patient/victim.

Inadequate physical examination belies surgeons' sincerity

2008-10-11T11:21:00.004-04:00

Reflection on my "attitude" - 2006 and now. If anything, surgeons' attitudes have reinforced my mistrust and proved their duplicity.

Should I hold onto the hope that in another country, doctors of another culture living in a different society than ours might recognize a sincere patient when they see one?

Cape Cod Hospital loses lawsuit evidence

2008-10-09T15:00:00.005-04:00

Trouble at Cape Cod Hospital. Why am I not surprised?
Link to the article at the Cape Cod Times has a comment section worth reading.

Brian West MD - Bad Plastic Surgery

2008-10-01T00:53:00.002-04:00

Blog dedicated to the memory of the former patients of Dr. Brian R. West who have lost their lives and to the patients who live with the lingering effects of errors and to the families and friends whose loss continues.
This blog is a must read.

Irish woman's family sue over US botched-op

2008-09-13T07:36:00.000-04:00

By Kevin Doyle

Wednesday September 10 2008

THE family of an Irish woman who died after a botched plastic surgery operation in New York are to begin a multi-million-dollar lawsuit next week.

Tragic Kay Cregan (42) died just three days after undergoing a facelift at the Manhattan clinic of Dr Michael Sachs in Central Park South.

Shortly after the operation, she collapsed and had to be rushed from the disgraced surgeon's clinic to the nearby St Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, where she died on March 17, 2005.

Her husband Liam, who did not know Kay had decided to have facial surgery, got a call at the family home in Croom to say his wife was on a life-support machine.

Liam Cregan and the Limerick couple's two young sons are now set to sue Dr Sachs with the help of a leading New York civil action lawyer, Thomas Moore.

Millions

Mr Moore said: "We will be looking for quite a bit of money. We are talking in millions of dollars at least.

"Parental loss to children is regarded in cases such as this as a very significant matter.

"The jury will have to decide on two central issues, negligence and medical malpractice, and what damages are to be awarded."

He continued: "At the end of the trial the judge will submit a written question to the jury as to the deviation from acceptable practice and the jury then answers this question.

"Depending on the verdict, the jury will then be asked about monetary damages for the loss and in New York there is no upward limit."

According to the lawyers, the case will open on Monday, but it is unlikely that the details surrounding Mrs Cregan's death will be debated until a later date.

Mr Moore said damages would be assessed on the loss of a wife, a mother of two young children, along with the pain and suffering Kay endured prior to her death.

He said the economic loss of Mrs Cregan, who was a senior official with Limerick City Council, would also be taken into account.

Dr Sachs has generated huge wealth from his practice and earlier this year sold his luxury Manhattan home to the Russian government for a reported €24m.

Kay Cregan was not aware that Dr Sachs was among the most sued doctors in the US when she paid $32,000 for the surgery.

She found out about him in an Irish Sunday newspaper which made no reference to his appalling record. Dr Sachs, has settled 33 malpractice suits since 1995.

- Kevin Doyle

Doctor keeps botched cosmetic surgery quiet

2008-09-07T21:00:00.002-04:00

by Deidre Mussen - Sunday Star Times

A DOCTOR made a patient sign a confidentiality agreement about her botched breast enlargement at a top Auckland private hospital, a women's health group has revealed.

Her horror story comes as the Medical Council ups the ante against rogue doctors performing cosmetic procedures.

Women's Health Action Trust director Jo Fitzpatrick told the Sunday Star-Times that the doctor waived some of his fee in exchange for the woman's silence.

Fitzpatrick said the woman was too terrified to speak out and a friend contacted the trust at the end of last year to urgently seek help.

"She had weeping wounds she was a complete mess. She ended up getting so disfigured, she wouldn't go out. It's the worst case we've come across."

The doctor tried to repair the damage but failed.

The woman was worried about breaching the confidentiality agreement, so the trust told her to say she had been operated on overseas.

"We hoped once she got help, the real story would come out."

Last October, the Medical Council released guidelines setting standards doctors had to meet to perform various cosmetic procedures after a number of botched cases raised concerns. Doctors had until this year to ensure their skills were up to the required level.

"There had been procedures that had gone wrong and we felt we had to make clear what sort of training is required," council chairman John Campbell said.

Some doctors had stopped offering certain procedures, particularly liposuction, because they failed to meet the new criteria, he said. Two doctors contacted the council this year to check whether they had sufficient training for the cosmetic surgery they offered, discovered they did not and had to stop. Another doctor was under investigation after the council received a complaint about him performing cosmetic surgery.

This week, as part of a safety push in the growing cosmetic surgery industry, the council plans to release a new brochure educating patients on what to expect. It specifies the training doctors require and how patients can find out if their doctor passes the council's criteria. It also gives patients questions to ask doctors, details information needed and highlights possible risks.

The brochure also discusses what should happen before and after procedures, plus what to do if anything goes wrong. It will be sent to medical centres, GP practices and plastic and reconstructive surgeons nationwide.

But Foundation for Cosmetic Plastic Surgery president Tristan de Chalain, an Auckland-based cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgeon, said the council's guidelines were too lax.

The foundation recently complained to the council about an Auckland dermatologist who was performing breast augmentation.

"We have very little protection for the public here. There are still huge loopholes."

However, he praised the council for its efforts to tighten standards.

Health commissioner Ron Paterson had called for tighter restrictions on cosmetic procedures, including better patient education, after some high-profile cases, including one involving a botched genital operation.

Fitzpatrick said she knew of three women who had complained to the trust about that Auckland gynaecologist, but only one had laid a formal complaint.

"Cosmetic surgery is a very difficult area for women to complain about when things go wrong because they blame themselves. Only one woman was brave enough to complain and it's great that she got findings in her favour."

Judge Rejects Plastic Surgeon Brian West's Attempt to Get a Restraining Order Against a Former Patient

2008-08-17T07:55:00.005-04:00

Not all judges grant restraining orders without legitimate grounds. This was an attempt by Dr. West to silence injured patients from publishing negative experiences with him on the Internet.

By DAFFODIL J. ALTAN Thursday, August 14, 2008 - 3:01 pm

Cutting Remarks

Plastic surgeon Brian West tries to get a restraining order against a former patient who got him into trouble with the state

Brian West, a plastic surgeon who practiced most recently in Huntington Beach and who is about to go on trial with the Medical Board of California for violating the terms of the board’s alcohol-abuse treatment program, is convinced one of his former patients is violently stalking him.

He’s so convinced that in mid-July, he filed for a restraining order against the former patient, Tina Minasian, as well as for one against the husband of another former patient.

“Whenever she loses in a court of law, she turns violent,” the burly, soft-spoken West nervously told a judge at a Los Angeles Superior Courthouse in Santa Monica last week. He held a stack of evidence, including printed copies of Web pages from MySpace and the site Minasian started, “Brian West MD—Bad Plastic Surgeon.”

With his buxom wife, Leighann West, by his side as a key witness, West described how he had received anonymous death threats and was afraid for his children’s safety as a result of Minasian’s relentless web activity. He told the judge he has opened a criminal stalking case with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Minasian is almost single-handedly responsible for the slew of medical-board accusations West will face in September. The hearings could result in the revocation of West’s license.

West performed a body-lift on Minasian in 2002 while practicing in Sacramento. Minasian filed a malpractice suit in 2005 after her wound healed horribly, she says. As reported in the Weekly (see “Under Wraps,” Jan. 10), just before her case went to trial, Minasian found out West was under investigation by the state medical board. She went to two of the board’s hearings and learned about West’s failure to stay sober while he was in the board’s Diversion Program—and while she was his patient.

The highly confidential program (the public were not allowed to know if their doctor was involved) gave practicing physicians with drug- and alcohol-abuse problems a way out of license revocation if they agreed to attend rehab sessions and take random urine tests. It was permanently abolished this year after failing five audits during its 27-year existence.

The board allowed West to keep his license in 2005 and put him on probation, despite his having relapsed four times while in the program. He relocated to Los Angeles and has practiced in Beverly Hills, Long Beach and Huntington Beach.

Minasian lost her malpractice case against West but learned that she could file a complaint with the state medical board. Minasian also learned the board was unaware of the dozen or so patients who had filed lawsuits against West because separate complaints were never filed with the board. She then began finding other patients who experienced similar bad outcomes after their surgeries with West—patients who had been seeing him during the time he had relapsed and been arrested for a second DUI. Minasian convinced many such patients to file complaints with the board. Many also detailed their stories, complete with gory pictures, on Minasian’s website.

Minasian’s journey didn’t stop there. She has made local and national rounds, along with other former patients, in an effort to advocate for patient safety and expose what she feels was a failed state diversion program. Their stories—and West’s—have been covered by the AP, CNN and Fox News.

All of this negative coverage has made his life a living hell, West told the judge last week. Minasian’s violent streak, he said, increases every time she suffers a loss in her battles with him. The latest, West stated in court documents, was the medical board’s recent decision that Minasian’s specific case would no longer be heard by them along with the others’ in September.

In the Santa Monica courtroom, an impatient Judge John Reid asked West if he had ever been physically assaulted or received death threats directly from Minasian, who lives hundreds of miles away in Sacramento. The ruddy-faced physician said no, not exactly. He pointed to a MySpace page that he alleged Minasian opened in his name.

That and the website with patients’ stories weren’t enough to convince the judge of her violent streak. “That’s cause for a civil lawsuit,” Reid said of the Internet activity. “To get what you want, you have to show that you’ve been attacked, stricken, assaulted and that there is perceived injury or threat to you and your family.”

In an interview, Minasian described West’s restraining-order efforts as “his attempt to compromise my First Amendment rights and to keep me from being called as a witness in September.” Minasian said she and Ken Mikulecky, the husband of a former patient who was named in the second restraining order filed by West, couldn’t afford to fly down for the brief hearing.

First Amendment lawyer James Leonard, who flew in from Oakland to represent the pair pro bono, didn’t have to make much of a case. The judge rejected West’s request after about 15 minutes of deliberation, reiterating several times that a restraining order was not “the proper vehicle” for what West was seeking. “If you were defamed, file your lawsuit,” he told the doctor.

daltan@ocweekly.com

Lethal Games Doctors Play

2008-08-16T15:05:00.005-04:00

I receive lots of e-mail from people who have suffered devastating injuries from cosmetic procedures. More than 90% of these injuries are serious, did not involve risk factors associated with the procedure, were not due to patients' idiosyncratic physiology , but were the direct result of surgeons' negligence, lack of skill, lack of experience in executing certain procedures, etc.

Yesterday I received a message expressing what I have heard numerous times from victims of negligent surgery. I will not reveal the details of her heartbreaking physical dysfunction and disfigurement, which involve the face and neck, and were eerily similar to my own condition. What I want to share is her excellent description of the way injured patients, who most deserve the BEST care, cannot get ANY care at all. I have written about the many times I have consulted surgeons about my own life threatening condition, and never received a physical examination appropriate to the problem. My friends did not believe me until they actually accompanied me to doctors' appointments where I actually took the doctors fingers and placed them in the area where it is impossible NOT to appreciate the lack of support to the inner structures in the neck, making it necessary for me to provide this support externally with a piece of wood. You cannot make a doctor perform an adequate physical examination.

This says it all:

"I have learned all to well how doctors stand in line behind each other. If I'd been in a car accident they'd be falling all over themselves to help. But because this was another doctor's mess no one wants anything to do with me. They won't even examine me. I have fabulous insurance and enough money to get stuff fixed but they won't get involved. It is so painful to get assaulted the first time and then get rejected over and over again. I can't believe this has happened to me. I trusted this guy and all the doctors that came after him. I hate that I no longer trust anyone. I miss that part of me. I want my life back. But I can't be fixed if no one will fully examine me. The only analogy I can think of is it is like being raped and assaulted by a policeman and then having to go to the police station to get help. Having to tell your story over and over again hoping to get someone willing to help you. "

"There definitely needs to be a better way. There is no recourse against them. In California even if a doctor kills you they get a slap on the wrist. The only thing that we can do is get our stories out there. The lawyers don't make a dime so they don't want to sue. The doctors know that and feel like they are untouchable."

It is impossible for anyone who has not suffered this experience to understand how it kills the soul. It kills you thoroughly- inside and out. People who have not personally been through this Hell cannot understand how a doctor can refuse to examine you. They do not refuse outright.. . The do not elevate the interaction to that degree of honesty! It is done through subterfuge and manipulation. It is a strategic maneuver intended to make the medical record appear as if there is nothing wrong. They are expert in covering failure to perform an adequate physical examination and appropriate diagnostics through their manipulation of the language in the medical record. Risk management manuals tell doctors exactly how to legally drive injured patients around in circles... until they just drop dead. From the perspective of the medical profession, that is the point- stall off long enough and sooner or later the patient will just disappear, i.e: die.

Patient left in dark after ‘odyssey’-Suit outlines nightmare surgery at Beth Israel

2008-08-05T07:05:00.004-04:00

A major Boston hospital that touts its commitment to “disclosure and honesty” faces legal action from an anguished veteran who says he was left in the dark for weeks after a simple cosmetic procedure spun into an “odyssey” of pain and suffering.

“I am furious that nobody at Beth Israel Deaconess cared enough to tell me what happened,” said Michael K. Hicks, 39, of Quincy. He has filed a civil suit accusing the renowned medical center of not owning up to its errors in the hours and days after his elective June 27 liposuction.

Prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Loren J. Borud, 44, was fired several weeks after the surgery, on July 18. Beth Israel first reached out to Hicks, who suffered bleeding, pain and emotional turmoil, after the Boston Herald began inquiring about Borud’s past on July 16.

More...

Patient sues plastic surgeon and Massachusetts hospital

2008-07-27T14:20:00.001-04:00

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

2008-07-13T11:20:00.003-04:00

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

2008-07-07T12:12:00.003-04:00

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?

2008-07-07T09:24:00.003-04:00

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

Off topic, but too important to ignore

2008-06-08T18:44:00.002-04:00

This issue effects every being on the planet.

This is a must see documentary: The World According to Monsanto

Doc slammed with $20.5 million in damages after lipo death

2008-05-26T22:51:00.002-04:00

A jury deliberated for 14 hours over three days before awarding an 18-year-old Penn State freshman's parents $20.5 million in damages, finding the Montco doc who did her liposuction liable.

read more digg story

Push for stricter plastic surgery rules

2008-05-26T11:51:00.003-04:00

Lawmakers and physicians' groups want increased oversight of doctors performing cosmetic procedures in outpatient facilities.

read more digg story

The Bad & The Ugly... More Common than You Think

2008-05-18T19:26:00.012-04:00

When other cosmetic surgery victims share their stories with me, I know why I continue my effort in exposing the side of this business which rarely reaches the public. Rachael Landes contacted me several weeks ago via private e-mail after joining Losing Face. Her story is compelling and all too familiar. Like many others who have been seriously injured, she wants the public to know how devastating this nightmare can be..not only its physical aspect, but the hidden repercussions attached to such injury..like patient blacklisting.

I suggested she post her messages to to Losing Face, knowing many of its readers have been victimized by the medical establishment, but think they are only part of a minuscule minority. They are not. The carnage is out there, but those who have been damaged in this profound manner are reluctant to go public for many reasons. From a personal perspective, I often wonder why I continue to subject myself to the barrage of criticism I receive, including exploitation by the media. Then I think: If I remain silent, who will expose this travesty of medicine? You develop a tough skin and must be willing to endure trashing by the public and character assassination by the medical profession to stand your ground when openly criticising high profile surgeons and institutions. More often than not, the price exacted may be your only chance to obtain medical treatment necessary for survival.

Patients and surgeons alike fall victim to the conspiracy of silence within the medical profession. Doctors are justified in their fear of blowing the whistle on incompetent colleagues or disrupting the status quo. The thanks they receive for standing the high ground are few to none. Rather, they are ostracized by peers and their livelihoods threatened. (The Cost of Courage: How the Tables Turn on Doctors) I have personally witnessed good doctors remain silent while they attempt to fix botched operations by incompetent colleagues, and the patients on the receiving end of their skills tacitly agree to remain silent as well.

Rachael is more than willing to share her story so that others may benefit from her experience, but she was not able to post long messages on the board. She gave me a green light to post her e-mail, so I have opened up pages especially for her voice - a voice that needs to be heard.

An Open Letter to Dr. Joel Feldman, Plastic Surgeon

2008-05-08T11:05:00.028-04:00

~~ ~~~~~

Left: November 1997 - Before Facelift

Center: 7 weeks After Facelift - 1 week Before Rhinoplasty

Right: 14 months After Rhinoplasty - 16 months After Facelift

Is anyone stupid enough to believe that the sagging, detached sack of soft tissue that is my face and neck is "normal stretchback" which occurs after a facelift just over 1 year old? That is what Dr. Feldman, Dr. James May and the deceitful surgeons at MGH tried to make me believe. This is TISSUE DAMAGE resulting from the trauma of a rhinoplasty done too soon (8 weeks) after a face lift in which the tumescent technique was used. Every patient consulting Drs. Feldman and May should ask them about my case and if they would ever subject one of their own patients to this guinea pig treatment. In fact, Dr. Feldman doesn't hesitate to re-operate on his private patients who end up with a minuscule area of post-seroma rippling. My seroma involved my whole face and neck- all areas involved in the facelift. But as a "clinic patient" they thought it acceptable to treat me as if I were an experimental laboratory animal...disposable. In his book, Dr. Feldman states "If 6 months pass and an unsatisfactory state of appearance has set in, then I think it is reasonable to consider a surgery that would involve a wide undermining of the skin to provide a better chance for skin contraction and accommodation". How fortunate for his private patients. I tried to become one of them, stating in writing that I was willing to pay his full fee. However, his secretary, Laura Keefe, refused to give me an appointment, and informed me that once anyone becomes a patient at the MGH Residents' Clinic, Dr. Feldman will NOT see them as a private patient.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 18, 2007

Dear Dr. Feldman:

Today is my birthday. I am 58 years old. Ten years ago I decided to give myself the ultimate birthday gift..a facelift. On October 16, 1997, I entered the Plastic Surgery Residents' Clinic at MGH at a point in my life where I had everything I ever wanted. I was in perfect health, enjoyed the love of friends and family. My life was rich, not in money or material things, but in ways money cannot buy... through my love and appreciation for nature and my creative ability to enhance that beauty as a gardener.

I was blessed at birth with a pretty face. Like most women, I enjoyed enhancing my appearance with cosmetics, keeping my body fit and healthy, adorning myself with clothes of my own design.
At 48, I succumbed to the allure of a facelift. As a well informed patient, my expectations were reasonable. I cut doctors more slack than most, having lived and worked with an MD for 12 years. I trusted doctors, as those I knew personally never displayed a hint duplicity.

The simple effort of typing this post leaves me short of breath. I am forced to live with a piece of wood pressed hard against my neck 24 hours a day to breathe. Things that require the use of two hands must be done in fits and starts, like a swimmer coming up for air. So I will not revisit details about my surgeries I have repeated ad nauseum on my website Losing Face.

The message I wish to convey to you today... my birthday, is this: Your decision, in conjunction with Dr. James May, Director of the Residents' Clinic, to perform my rhinoplasty 8 weeks after my facelift and lower blepharoplasty was imprudent and irresponsible. Your decision resulted in permanent tissue damage to all undermined areas of my face and neck. The massive swelling after my rhinoplasty damaged the newly forming adhesion between the tissue planes. My face and neck was one massive seroma; resulting in what you call a "soggy" platysma .

You refused to see me as a private patient when I offered to pay your full fee. You agreed to see me 8 months after the injurious rhinoplasty and claimed your "examination" revealed no "abnormality". While I begged and pleaded for MGH to perform simple dermatological studies on the effected tissue, even if nothing could be done surgically to improve the appearance of the sagging face I did not have before my facelift , you and MGH ignored me. You and MGH forced me to waste months of my life behind a keyboard, writing letters, literally begging and groveling for you to recognize "complications" you mention in your book "Neck Lift".

Dr. Feldman, it was your responsibility to perform my revision surgery, according to the consent I signed at MGH. Please remember that I based my decision to undergo rhinoplasty only 8 weeks after my facelift because I believed it must be safe if approved by a surgeon with your illustrious reputation. You forced me to seek a revision elsewhere and that surgery left me unable to lift my head, close my jaw, breathe or swallow normally since the day of the operation. The damaged platysma, thinned and stretched to the limit of its biomechanical extendability, was surgically manipulated in a manner that is literally killing me. Dr. 's surgically created fixed contracture of a muscle sheath devoid of any ability to stretch, has transferred the inappropriate vectors of tension to adjacent tissue. Over six physically torturous years, it has gradually and continually displaced the internal anatomy of the throat, causing the positional airway obstruction diagnosed by a pulmonologist in 2004.

The surgeon in Hyannis who removed my sutures after Dr. Barry Eppley's revision facelift said he would consider releasing the platysma muscle "if I twisted his arm". That was in July 2001 when I saw him for injection of a trigger thumb. His notes do not mention our discussion about my inability to lift my head or close my jaw, though on that day, he drew a diagram of the transverse incision he always uses in face/neck lifts, which Dr. Eppley neglected to use, in spite of his agreement to to do so. I know my own anatomy and the limitations the damaged tissue would impose upon revision. I was certain my revision would require, without exception, a release of that muscle one way or another. My present state proves I was correct.

You tried to have my accurate photos removed from the Internet with your lawsuit in Sept 2002 . In October 2002, I called the doctor who originally removed my sutures intending to "twist his arm" to perform the platysma release. His secretary phoned me to say the doctor suggests I return to.. in Indiana.. when I had not been able to drive to Boston by myself because I could not lift my head to see the road and breathe at the same time. I believe your lawsuit influenced his decision, as I know it has that of other surgeons from whom I sought help... not for aesthetic reasons, but to literally save my life.

I am dying, Dr. Feldman, from an operation I would never have sought elsewhere if you had addressed my legitimate problem in a timely manner. You told writer Rich Bergeron that you did not operate on me because you thought you could not make me "happy"... Happy? I am trying to save my life! You are responsible for my ending up in the hands of another surgeon...one who led me to believe he understood the limitations of the compromised tissue you caused with your irresponsible decision to supervise my rhinoplasty before my facelift was sufficiently healed.

You told Rich Bergeron that I did not have swallowing difficulty after my rhinoplasty. Strictly speaking, I was able to swallow.. I did not have dysphagia.. Yet I have a tape recording of my conversation with Dr. May in which I am telling him the sagging tissue of my neck made chewing and swallowing feel like hard work, that I had pain directly in the area of the platysma plication when I swallowed. In this taped conversation I reminded him that the consent form stated that if a revision was necessary, the surgeon's fee would be waived. I told him that it was obvious to me that the platysma plication tore through or separated after the rhinoplasty swelling, which my documented photographs clearly prove.

Your arrogance and deceit in trying to make a judge believe it was humanly possible to deliberately contort one's face to cause the appearance of sagging I did not have before the facelift is evidence of the double standard you engage for your private patients as opposed to "clinic" patients. You prove this aspect of your character in your own book. I am certain you didn't accuse the patient with the "crinkly skin" that did not "stick down" of deliberately contorting her face and neck to make it "appear" that way as you did to me. In fact, anyone, regardless of age or skin tone, would find it quite IMPOSSIBLE to deliberately contort their face to create the sagging in my photos.

You accused me of having BDD, which I never had. I have always been far less demanding than the average patient, willing to accept the imperfections that are bound to occur. Your lawyers chewed me up and spit me out for telling the truth on the Internet, which you forced me to do because you chose to deny the obvious. I have been exploited by filmmakers , demeaned by your unscrupulous attorneys and libeled in a medical journal. You have ignored the reality of the destruction of a life which your decisions facilitated.

I am still alive, but just barely hanging on. Rich Bergeron contacted me one year ago wanting to write about my experience after seeing the HBO documentary in which I appeared, because the film made him feel as if something was "missing" from my story as it was portrayed. His intuition was accurate. He is, or more accurately, was optimistic that in interviewing the doctors involved in my surgeries, he would initiate a "happy ending" to my story. At that point, he was not able to accept that I would be left to die a slow death, suffering increasing disability until I am no longer able to survive on my own. Having accompanied me on my last appointment with an ENT specialist, he now believes differently...

I need to tell you, while I am still able, that your decisions regarding my case were fatally flawed. I have been robbed of 10 years of peace of mind, and subjected to 6 /12 years of continual physical torture. You could have prevented this, but you did not. You accused me of heinous lies and morphing photographs when you had a direct hand in causing the damage depicted in those accurate photos. I have forgotten the kind and caring person I used to be. You betrayed my trust. I hope you are never allowed to forget me when I am gone. I know Rich Bergeron will never forget what he has witnessed of my life this past year, and I know he will set the record straight regarding my experience, even if it does not have the happy conclusion he wanted. You told Rich that you thought of contacting me... but you did not. Why not? Did you not realize that all I wanted was to be treated like a human being?

I TRUSTED you. I never wanted to point the finger of blame at any doctor, but neither could I allow an opportunity for doctors to learn from my suffering to be thrown by the wayside because doctors cannot admit they are only human and make mistakes. You misjudged me because you never allowed yourself to see me as a human being, rather than a surgical case at the Resident's Clinic. You have no idea whom you helped to destroy. That sensitive, kind person died.. killed by the arrogance of a profession impressed by its own narcissistic power.

I am trying to save my life. I have begged and groveled for doctors' help for years when you and MGH deliberately denied the reality of the tissue damage. Your lawsuit which attempted to force removal of my photos from the Internet served to BLACKLIST me from receiving the medical attention I now require to SAVE MY LIFE. You are capable of saving my life.

If you remain silent and do nothing to help me, I want people to know of your refusal to accept responsibility for your actions and your disregard for my appeal to help save my life before it is too late. .
Shalom, Dr. Feldman...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photos documented by legal photographer.. No room for misrepresentation here. You cannot FAKE or deliberately contort your face to produce the sagging and "detachment" caused from massive swelling of a rhinoplasty performed too soon (8 weeks) after a facelift. This is what Dr. Feldman DENIED happened, and worse, falsely accused me of deliberately posting misleading photos online. His colleague, Dr. Barry Zide, who made libelous reference to me in the Journal of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery by accusing me of morphing photos he called "ghoulish", reviewed these same photos himself, shortly after my surgery at Mass General.. He certainly wasn't calling them morphed then.

Watch Interview with photographer & filmmaker Erika Hahn who followed my surgery journey with photo documentation for 10 years.

Do they tell the kids Mommy might end up maimed for life or dead?

2008-05-01T15:03:00.002-04:00

New Kids' Book on Plastic Surgery Skirts Breasts

Source: Newsweek, April 15, 2008
How does a mother explain to her children why she's having a breast augmentation, a tummy tuck or a nose job? Help is on the way -- a new book for kids about plastic surgery, My Beautiful Mommy. The story features a handsome, musclebound, superhero-type male doctor and a Mommy who says that as she got older, she couldn't fit into her clothes any more. Mom explains to her child that the doctor is going to help her fix all that. Mom comes home after surgery looking slightly bruised and bandaged, but with fuller, higher breasts. The text of the book doesn't mention breasts, though; only Mom's "tummy." Michael Salzhauer, the plastic surgeon who wrote the book, said, "The tummy lends itself to an easy explanation to the children: extra skin and can't fit into your clothes. The breasts might be a stretch for a six-year-old."

PHOTOS
Gallery: Mom's New Look
Excerpts from a new picture book for the children of women who have cosmetic surgery.

Cosmetic surgery business sags as purse strings tighten :)

2008-04-17T12:11:00.002-04:00

After years of steady growth, the multibillion-dollar industry has hit a rough patch. Consumers are cutting back on discretionary spending.

read more digg story

The Sagging Demand for Plastic Surgery

2008-04-17T11:44:00.001-04:00

If your local real estate agent's face is hanging low these days, it might be more than sadness. The recession's latest victim is cosmetic surgery. Plastic surgeons from the Southland to South Florida said some colleagues are struggling to stay in business.

read more | digg story

My Breast Implants Come Out

2008-03-24T17:33:00.001-04:00

A Documentary Addict's Dream Come True

2008-02-19T16:44:00.005-05:00

I want to share the most important website I have discovered in a very long time. http://www.freedocumentaries.org/ has a long list of the most thought provoking, insightful documentary films available.. free to watch at your convenience. The list is too long for me to include here, but you will be astonished at what you will find.. The best of the most important documentaries anywhere.. some impossible to find anywhere else.

I happened upon FreeDocumentaries.org while searching for documentary films about India, and found 'The Slow Poisoning of India'. Half way into this disturbing film I noticed a very tiny message at the top of the screen which read: "If you like this film please donate". I live on a poverty level income and $10. goes a long way with me, but I didn't hesitate for a moment in making a donation. The folks who make these life-altering films available to the public are providing a public service that is priceless.

Did you miss Michael Moore's 'SICKO' when it played at your local theatre? You can watch it for free at http://www.freedocumentaries.org/. Here are some of my favorites, and this is only taste of what you will find:

'Born Into Brothels'

DISPATCHES: SUPERMARKET SECRETS PART 1

The Future of Food

BBC News: Child Slavery with Rageh Omaar

Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Pushing Drugs

PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER

Super Size Me

The Origins of AIDS

THE CORPORATION

ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM

This only scratches the surface. After watching my first film, I couldn't wait to e-mail everyone on my mailing list about this gold mine of docs and found myself writing in the subject line:

"Who needs TV?"

I have been riveted to my screen since. Check it out, and do donate to this extraordinary effort to raise public awareness on the most important issues today.

Watch free movies and documentary films

(Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement and I am not affiliated with this website. I simply feel compelled to share this rare find with as many people as possible for the greater good)

Lucille

Cosmetic Surgery Catastrophe

2008-01-27T18:08:00.005-05:00

Interview with Erika Hahn, filmmaker, photographer, webmaster and my dear friend. For the past 10 years, Erika has given generously of her professional skills as a photographer and videographer in documenting the damaging results of my cosmetic surgeries. Listen to her comments on false statement made by Dr. Joel Feldman regarding accuracy of her photographs of my "fallen" facelift. Erika has been by my side through many consultations and meetings with plastic surgeons, always with sensitivity, compassion and moral support.
Here are observations of one who has been there for me every step of they way.