Thanks to Sandra for sending us the following article...Myrl
Plastic surgery a booming business in Mexican border
towns
SAN ANTONIO - Thousands of people yearning for a
better body are visiting Mexican plastic surgery
clinics that offer makeovers at a third of the cost in
the United States.
The industry has flourished, with new clinics touting
their services on billboards, newspaper ads and
television commercials across South Texas.
While some full service clinics offer American-style
standards with inviting waiting areas and scrubbed
surgical suites, those images mask the downside of a
booming business that has littered northern Mexico
with backward operations run by physicians with
questionable credentials, the San Antonio Express-News
re****ted Sunday.
In more than two months of re****ting on both sides of
the border, the newspaper found a largely unregulated
system where patients can enter a dentist's office
that also advertises plastic surgery and leave with a
nose job performed by an unlicensed doctor.
Through interviews with doctors, patients, government
regulators and families, the Express-News learned some
patients were left horribly scarred or fighting severe
infections from botched surgeries. But because of poor
record keeping, weak oversight and a system that
discourages lawsuits, it is impossible to know the
number of injuries or deaths in Mexican clinics.
U.S. doctors along the border said they're all too
familiar with the problem. Some have begun to
specialize in "secondary repair" undoing damage done
in Mexico because so many patients have required
reconstruction.
Dr. Tolbert Wilkinson, a San Antonio plastic surgeon,
said he's seen dozens of women return from the border
with broken or slipping breast implants, infections
and large scars.
"Ugly scars are coming from the border," said
Wilkinson, one of the few Texas surgeons who is
willing to treat people after things go wrong in
Mexico. Many doctors won't accept those patients
because the liability is too great.
A Lakehills mother of four who asked only to be
identified as Lynn claims she was disfigured in
December from plastic surgery at the Centro de
Ginecologia y Obstetricia in Nuevo Laredo. The
newspaper said the clinic apparently was not
accredited.
Lynn, 36, said she had trouble healing after having a
tummy tuck and liposuction on Dec. 10.
"I kept bleeding on my suture, and I didn't know what
it was," said Lynn, who returned to the clinic and had
surgery to repair her bleeding stomach incision.
The Mexican clinic is co-owned by David Hernandez, a
San Antonio-based marketer who goes by the name Dr.
Dave, though he is not a doctor on either side of the
border. He acknowledged that Lynn experienced
complications after undergoing surgery but said he
thought they were successfully treated in the
follow-up visit.
But the infection returned in late December, and she
had trouble standing up straight.
"I still can't stand up perfectly straight and it's
been eight weeks," she said.
Lynn went to see Wilkinson, who discovered she had
fluids trapped inside that hadn't drained properly.
Wilkinson put her on new antibiotics and has been
draining the fluids out of a hole on her lower
abdomen.
Asked if she do it all over again, she said: "Oh,
absolutely not."
Some patients can't be saved. Plastic surgeons in
Brownsville said they couldn't help two women who died
from gangrene that developed from infections after
their surgeries in Matamoros. One woman's skin peeled
off when emergency room doctors lifted her from one
bed to another.
"I have never seen a worse case of gangrene anywhere -
not even in Mexico," said Dr. Rafael Arredondo, who
was working in the emergency room when the woman's
husband brought her in.
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February 6, 2005 - 11:23 a.m. CST
http://www.dailysentinel.com/hp/content/gen/ap/TX_Border_Plastic_Surgery.html
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