A woman in China died after undergoing six cosmetic surgeries within 24 hours, following which her family filed a lawsuit against the clinic, demanding 1.2 million yuan (about Rs 1.36 crore). According to the South China Morning Post, the woman, identified as Liu, who came from a rural area in Guigang, Guangxi Province, South China, visited a clinic in Nanning on December 9, 2020.
Before that, she took out a loan worth over 40,000 yuan (approximately Rs 4.52 lakh) for six cosmetic procedures.
That same afternoon, she underwent her first double eyelid surgery and rhinoplasty, which lasted five hours, according to the report. After this, she underwent a liposuction procedure on her thighs, after which the fat was injected into her face and breasts the next morning, which also took five hours.
But on December 11, when she was discharged, she was walking towards the clinic’s elevator when she suddenly collapsed. While clinic staff attempted to provide emergency care, Liu had to be transferred to another hospital, where she was pronounced dead that afternoon.
According to SCMP, her autopsy report showed she died of “acute respiratory failure due to pulmonary embolism following liposuction.”
Her daughter was 8 years old and her son 4 at the time.
Her husband said the clinic tried to settle the matter out of court and offered 200,000 yuan (about Rs 22.6 lakh), but he thought 1 million was the least they could offer for someone’s death. He refused the settlement and decided to go to court instead.
However, during the investigation, it was found that the clinic had the necessary legal documents to perform the procedure and that all doctors involved in Liu’s procedures were legally licensed. During liposuction, the amount of fat removed met medical standards. During the legal proceedings, the clinic maintained that Liu was responsible for understanding the risks of cosmetic surgery. They argued that the autopsy report alone did not provide sufficient grounds to substantiate the claims of malpractice.
Despite requests from multiple court-appointed agencies to provide the clinic with treatment standards, it failed to comply.
In May 2021, the court initially ruled that the clinic was fully responsible for Liu’s death and ordered damages of more than one million yuan. But last year the clinic appealed and the court revised the damages award to 590,000 yuan (about Rs 66.7 lakh) and acknowledged that the clinic was partly responsible for the incident.
According to SCMP, the evaluation indicated that Liu’s health may have contributed to her death, leading the court to conclude shared liability between her and the clinic.
Citing 2020 data from iResearch Consulting, SCMP reported that only 24 percent of practitioners in China’s plastic surgery industry are legally licensed, while more than 100,000 operate illegally. These illegal procedures can result in approximately 100,000 cases of disability or death each year.
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