When Liposuction Goes Wrong, the Result Can Be Deadly
Judy Fernandez, a 47-year-old businesswoman and mother of three from La Habra, Calif., trudged daily on her StairMaster, but like many women her age, she couldn't manage to lose the stubborn saddlebags and fat pouches on her legs and inner thighs. So when she saw a full-page ad in OrangeCoast magazine for "A New You" cosmetic surgery center, featuring a distinguished doctor surrounded by satisfied beauties, she was willing to try something new.
Fernandez underwent liposuction, a surgical procedure in which fat deposits are sucked out of the body from beneath the skin. She had intended to limit the procedure to her thighs and stomach, but she had the surgeon, William E. Matory Jr. of Irvine, Calif., perform liposuction on other areas, too, along with a fat transfer to her buttocks, a partial face lift, and laser resurfacing. Ten and a half hours later, after the doctor had removed 9 pounds of fat and fluids from her 5-foot, 2-inch, 150-pound body, she was lying on the operating table, unresponsive. Barely four hours later, she was dead of cardiac arrest.
Fernandez, whose case prompted the Medical Board of California to revoke Matory's license, was in an unfortunate minority among the hundreds of thousands of people who undergo this most popular of cosmetic procedures each year. Most patients find liposuction a relatively safe way to drop down a belt notch by trimming off what dieting and exercise can't. But Fernandez is part of a troubling statistic: A random survey of plastic surgeons released last month found that the death rate from liposuctions from 1994 to 1998 was 20 times higher--1 in 5,000--than elective surgery as a whole. And experts worry that the death rate is actually higher, because liposuction has moved out of hospitals and into doctors' offices and storefront clinics. These centers are not held to the same credentialing standards as hospitals and are under no obligation to report problems to state medical boards. "Liposuction is not trivial surgery," said plastic surgeon Frederick M. Grazer and anesthesiologist Rudolph H. de Jong, the study's authors. "Liposuction is not an altogether benign procedure."
Boomer bellies. Yet as Americans become older, richer, and fatter, they are flocking to "surgicenters" and "day spas" as never before, losing fat along with wrinkles and unwanted facial hair. The typical liposuction patient, once a socialite or actress, is now a 37-to-50-year-old career woman who just wants to look a little better in her jeans. These average Americans helped increase the number of liposuction procedures by 64 percent from 1994 to 1998, making it an estimated $700 million a year business.
It is a boom fed by unusually aggressive marketing. Doctors are luring patients with newspaper and magazine ads that compare "before" photographs of unsightly stomach rolls with "after" pictures of tight physiques that look fake because they often are. A recent issue of the LA Weekly newspaper featured ads for no fewer than 17 liposuctionists. And in Reno, Nev., a liposuction center has blocked views of the Sierra Nevada mountains with a lighted billboard that urges residents to dial 1-888-GO-4-LIPO. "Because of people's comfort level," says Harvey Zarem, former head of plastic surgery at the University of California-Los Angeles Medical Center, "liposuction is . . . pushed and fostered."
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