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Liposuction Can Be Deadly
The above headline came from Jan. 19, 2000 MSNBC news. The subtitle is
even more chilling saying, “Liposuction has become the most common
cosmetic procedure in the United States, but surgeons warned Wednesday
that some people dying to get rid of that extra fat may literally pay for
it with their lives.” This revelation was based on a survey of plastic
surgeons. In that survey, of the 917 surgeons who answered, they reported
95 deaths in more than 496,000 operations. This works out to one death in
5,224, or 19 per 100,000. Generally, the medically accepted death rate for
any kind of elective surgery, the kind not needed to save a life is 1 in
100,000. This makes liposuction 19 times more deadly than other elective
surgery. Dr. Gerald Pitman of New York University, and a privately
practicing plastic surgeon, said, “The problem with liposuction is not
that it is unsafe. The problem is that neither the surgeons nor the
patients take it seriously enough,”
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