| Liposuction leaves woman with abdomen hard as steel |
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| Wednesday, 23 August 2006 | |
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In September of 2003, the 53-year-old woman, from Sichuan Province, underwent liposuction at a local hospital to make herself slimmer, and the operation appeared to have been a success. But just several days after the operation, the skin on her abdomen became darker and welts began to appear. She returned to the hospital where she received a skin transplant for the affected area. Last March, Zhang had an independent medical examination of her skin, which said the hospital which performed the liposuction procedure was responsible, because there was a relationship between the scars on her belly and the liposuction operation. In addition to suing the hospital, the woman says that she was deceived, since the operation records showed that the doctor who conducted the liposuction on her was not the well-known surgeon she had asked for and been promised. In its defence, the hospital said that the scars on the woman were post operational complications which were caused by her constitution, and that consequently it was not at fault. The hospital also maintained that the two different signatures on the medical orders and operation records were made by the same doctor who had already left the hospital. Lawsuits of this kind are expanding rapidly in China's cosmetic surgery market, which is characterized by an increase in demand by newly affluent patients, and an increase in competition among hospitals seeking to benefit from the rise in popularity of liposuction and cosmetic surgery. In 2004, the China Consumer Association released a report that in the last 10 years, there was an average of 20,000 complaints over cosmetic operations each year. |
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