In what has been classified as a case of unnatural death by the police, a 35-year-old Singaporean woman died just hours after undergoing liposuction surgery in the Indian city of Chennai yesterday.
Intending to lose some pounds, Alicia Medanin Khan had been admitted to S R Multi Specialty Hospital in Arumbakkam on Wednesday for the operation, and was shifted to the post-surgery intensive care unit at 5:30pm, Times Of India reported. Her husband — a businessman in Singapore — claimed that doctors did not allow him to see his wife due to her suffering complications. They informed him that she needed to be monitored for at least 24 hours.
But it was at 1:30am the next day that the man was given the grim news — his wife had passed away due to a sudden cardiac arrest.
When he demanded written details about the circumstances of his wife’s death, the doctors refused to comply. He then lodged a police report alleging that the doctors and hospital management did not disclose his wife’s health before and after surgery, and that she died due to medical negligence.
Khan’s body has since been sent for an autopsy for further investigations. The hospital asserted that she died of cardiac arrest six hours after the surgery.
A semi-similar case in Singapore saw the family of a real estate bigwig awarded $5.323 million after a botched liposuction in 2009. Franklin Heng — the chief executive of YTL Starhill Global Reit Management — was 44 when he died after being given too much anesthesia during a procedure at Reves Clinic.
While liposuction generally isn’t considered a dangerous procedure, every surgery carries an inherent risk of something going wrong. One of the more high-profile cases of liposuction gone awry is none other than the death of Kanye West’s own mother, Donda West. In 2007, the 58-year-old died of “coronary artery disease and multiple post-operative factors due to or as a consequence of liposuction and mammoplasty,” according to a coroner’s report.
