Truth in Cosmetic Surgery

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.