Archive for category plastic surgery complications

Understanding the “Porn Star Boob Job”

Image courtesy of Vivid Entertainment

We have discussed “all implant” boob jobs before. This is my designation for a woman with implants so large they dwarf her own tissues. Breast implants help make breasts look the most natural when there is adequate tissue to cover them. When the size of the implant gets too large and/or they are put over the muscle, we get distortion and/or a more fake look. The breasts end up looking like balls or oranges. Some women of course desire this look. Many of them work in adult entertainment.

With the “bigger implant and little or no covering tissue” jobs, we also get the increased possibility for re-operation for pain, implant displacement, and rippling. In the breast implant case, “bigger” comes with “bigger risks.”

Women who choose to go progressively “bigger” and “bigger” flirt with disaster at some point. There are always compromises though. The woman in the image above seems far from that, but does have the balloon look – the implants are either over the muscle or have little tissue covering them.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Originally posted 2010-08-04 10:00:44.

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Plastic Surgery Nightmares – Really?

Hollywood Rag has a post on “Plastic Surgery Nightmares.” The reality is that these are mostly stories of celebrities who have had a fair amount of surgery. Some of them have freaky outcomes. It is all a matter of opinion in plastic land. Those are really not nightmares. Then again this stuff sells papers.

Source: hollywoodrag.com/index.php?/weblog/in_touch_plastic_surgery_nightmares/

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Originally posted 2008-02-05 08:15:00.

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A Woman Warns of South American Plastic Surgery

Forum Post:

WARNING SOUTH AMERICAN CLINIC BREAST IMPLANTS

Postby powderpuff » Sun Sep 09, 2007 11:17 pm
THIS IS A WARNING!! I had a breast lift and augmentation done in South America about a year and a half ago. The breasts were asymmetrical and the scars keloided. I don’t think this had anything to do with the surgeon, but the CLINIC he was working for gave him (and all their doctors) only cheap, substandard materials to work with. Permanent sutures were used and digging them out caused the keloiding. Some of the sutures were still underneath the skin when I had the breasts redone, as the clinic kept postponing the suture removal until the poor material had become embedded! About a year ago I started experiencing pain in both breasts but figured it was normal, and I have a high tolerance for pain. I just had the surgery redone by a PS here in SF
Source: messageboards.makemeheal.com/viewtopic.php?t=57402

This gal posts on a forum I have frequented in the past about her experience with cosmetic surgery in South America. Be careful.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

BTW – There are also good surgeons in South America. They don’t operate in substandard conditions in a basement for pennies though.

Originally posted 2007-09-12 09:19:00.

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Painful Lumps After Breast Reduction?

After breast reduction surgery it frequently takes a while for the healing to be complete. During the process of healing, scar tissue can form along the incisions and also within the breast (fat necrosis.) Your body usually improves this scar tissue in a process called scar remodeling over the course of the first year to 18 months. If there are areas of discomfort afterward, a re-evaluation is appropriate to determine whether or not anything can be done to improve the result.

Not everyone gets these scarred uncomfortable areas. They are more common in larger reductions and in smokers.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Related:

Dr D’s Web Site Breast Reduction page

Originally posted 2010-01-28 07:30:23.

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Silicone Injections Lead To More Death

Patients who get massive silicone injections to enlarge their breasts or buttocks should expect trouble, local cosmetic doctors say. Especially if the silicone isn’t a medical-grade product, the procedure can lead to disfigurement or death. That’s what apparently happened to the patients of Guadalupe Viveros, who allegedly ran an unlicensed cosmetic-injection clinic out of her home in Sylmar, Calif. Police are seeking Viveros and her business partner, sister Alejandra Viveros, in connection with the death of a patient.

The buttocks are “one of the worst places for injections,” said plastic surgeon Dr. John Di Saia of San Clemente and Anaheim. Large quantities of material must be injected there to make a difference in their appearance, but that is risky, because the buttocks contain so many blood vessels, he said. That is reportedly what caused the death last year of former Miss Argentina Solange Magnano, who had died after getting buttock injections of microspheres of PMMA plastic, which apparently blocked an artery in her lungs.

OC Register Blog

I chimed in on this one as you can read. Silicone injections are bad news. You should steer clear of them.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Originally posted 2010-07-30 07:30:25.

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Sexy Cora Death & Extreme Breast Implant Surgery

Sexy Cora

Ms Berger, a sex film celebrity, had joined the German version of Big Brother last year, where she behaved more and more outrageously. She embarked on a series of breast enlargements in a bid to keep her publicity going. Hamburg prosecutors are investigating her doctors for negligence. Ms Berger was put in an artificial coma on 11 January because of serious complications after her sixth operation, which took place at a clinic in the north German city. It is believed she suffered two cardiac arrests after the procedure to enlarge her breasts from a 70F to a 70G (UK: 34F to 34G). She had wanted to increase the size of her silicone breast enhancements from 500g (18oz) to 800g (28oz) each, Bild newspaper reported.

Source: bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12249452

Trying to hit the record books by placing larger and larger implants has consequences. This 23 year old woman died after complications developed with her sixth breast implant operation. The woman reportedly weighted only 106 pounds yet wanted her 500 g silicone gel implants replaced with 800 g implants.

We have discussed here the increased risk that patients accept in targeting really large implant sizes. Sheyla Hershey became the World’s largest implant patient but later developed infection and had her implants removed. She suffered deformity and will likely need reconstructive operations to limit that deformity.

Ms Berger (who apparently went by a number of other names) passed away from pushing surgery to extremes. Her exact cause of death might never be publicly known. Suffice it to say, six operations to achieve a super large cosmetic breast result in a 23 year old woman are extreme and therefore carry much higher risk than the norm.

The Huffington Post reported that the 800 g of silicone was injected as “free silicone,” meaning not contained in an implant. That explains the heart stopping and the negligent manslaughter charge. Free silicone is all too free. It can move throughout the body in the blood vessels (as it probably did in this case) and even when it doesn’t it tends to scar horribly. Large volume injections have been associated with death before. To answer a comment, this must have been a substandard surgical outfit.

Better results can be obtained and are obtained in skilled hands using good judgment daily. This was not one of those cases and was eminently avoidable.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Originally posted 2011-01-23 07:30:32.

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A Plastic Surgical Tourism Disaster

Stacey Cavaliere’s story starts off pleasantly enough. After two years of diet and exercise she lost 135 pounds, and as a reward she was planning a Costa Rica vacation, where a nice relaxing trip awaited her. Or that’s what the tourist Web site promised her. It also promised that Caveliere, 35, would come back lifted, tucked and toned in places where her extreme weight loss yielded excess hanging skin. But upon returning to the U.S., Cavaliere wasn’t showing off her new body — she was rushed to the emergency room where her abdomen had to be completely reconstructed after a botched body lift. Only after eight surgeries did she end up with the body she wanted.
Source: aolhealth.com/condition-center/plastic-cosmetic-surgery/medical-tourism

The problem with trying to offer large scale surgery on the cheap is that you often are short changed on the technical and safety aspects …the stuff that really matters. Any patient can get a wound infection, but if these are detected early in good follow-up they are much less damaging. Using the proper precautions they are rare, but what if some of those precautions are skipped because they are deemed too costly? You are the one who loses here.

When your surgeon lives on another continent, it is difficult to get good follow-up care even if the surgical care was good. This woman had a catastrophe requiring eight operations by a domestic plastic surgeon for repair. In this case, cheap became really expensive.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Related:

Tameka Foster (Usher’s Wife) and Surgical Tourism

Dr D’s “Cheap Plastic Surgery”

Originally posted 2009-03-27 14:25:00.

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Dr Jan Adams Wound Healing Problem Case on TMZ

Source: tmz.com/2007/11/16/dr-adams-and-the-plastic-surgery-nightmare-the-pix

TMZ published images of another tummy tuck and breast lift/reduction patient of Dr Adams. She has the appearance of moderate to severe wound healing problems.

Although it is easy to just slam the good doctor here like everyone else, the fact is that these operations have risk. Although I would probably have done things differently I cannot know looking at a bunch of images if either technique or poor patient selection may have affected the outcome. Did the patient smoke? Cigarette smoking really puts a damper on healing from breast lift/reduction and tummy tuck surgery in particular. If the patient were a smoker, this kind of thing could have happened to any surgeon at least in the latest “images-included” case.

Best Regards,
John Di Saia MD

Originally posted 2007-11-16 21:34:00.

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Extreme Makeover Contestant Bursts A Breast Implant

Nicola, an air hostess from Bolton, Lancashire, had endured a total of 30 hours on a Los Angeles operating table, all paid for by Brand New You, an ‘extreme makeover’ show on channel Five.

A few weeks ago, Nicola was disturbed to find that one of the expensive implants had burst, leaving her left breast like a shriveled balloon.
Source: dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1167519/A-television-gave-air-hostess-extreme-makeover–body-began-explode.html

Breast implants do not last forever. They can burst and larger ones tend to do so sooner than smaller ones.

Now, worse still, the programme makers are refusing to pay towards corrective surgery. Nicola, 35, claims that the American surgeon who carried out her breast augmentation in 2004 has already offered to put it right under a ten-year warranty.

I wonder if a UK surgeon is able to do the surgery under warranty. An interesting consequence of having surgery in a foreign country (to the patient).

‘When I do manage to get the money together, I have decided not to go back to the States to have the boob job. Next time I will stick to a surgeon in the UK just in case anything goes wrong again.’

That may be best. Then again you did get it free the first time.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Originally posted 2009-04-09 07:30:00.

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Liposuction Death by Family Doctor

The case of a Toronto woman who died after having liposuction is raising concerns about doctors who are performing cosmetic surgery procedures despite not being licensed as plastic surgeons. Thirty-two-year-old Krista Stryland, a successful Toronto real estate agent and mother, underwent a liposuction operation at the Toronto Cosmetic Clinic located on Yonge Street in North York…
Sources told CTV Toronto that the woman’s heart stopped following the operation to remove fat from her abdominal area. She was taken to North York General Hospital and died despite attempts to revive her.

There are reports that the family doctor who performed the operation had training in cosmetic surgery but was not a licensed plastic surgeon, said CTV Toronto.
Source: ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070922/liposuction_070922/20070922?hub=CTVNewsAt11

Despite the fact that there are marketing forces at play that would disagree, there are some people who simply less skilled and knowledgeable than others when it comes to performing your cosmetic surgery. The stakes are high so be careful.

This is a Caveat emptor paradigm to say the least. You need to carefully choose your surgeon.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD

Related:

* Cosmetic Surgeon vs Plastic Surgeon: What’s the Difference?

* Can Just Anyone do my Cosmetic Surgery?

Originally posted 2007-09-23 08:50:00.

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