A woman in China died after getting six cosmetic surgeries within 24 hours, after which her family filed a lawsuit against the clinic and sought 1.2 million yuan (approx Rs 1.36 crore). According to the South China Morning Post, the woman who has been identified as Liu, belonging to a rural area in Guigang, Guangxi province, southern China visited a clinic in Nanning on December 9, 2020.
Before which she took out a loan worth over 40,000 yuan (approx Rs 4.52 lakh) for six cosmetic procedures.
The same afternoon she first underwent double eyelid surgery and a nose job, which took five hours, as per the report. Following this, she had a liposuction procedure on her thighs, the fat was then injected into her face and breasts the next morning which also lasted five hours.
But on December 11, when she was discharged she was walking towards the lift of the clinic when she suddenly collapsed. While the clinic staff tried to provide emergency care, Liu had to be transferred to another hospital, where she was declared dead that afternoon.
According to SCMP, her autopsy report showed that she died from “acute respiratory failure due to pulmonary embolism after liposuction”.
At the time, her daughter was 8 years old while her son was 4.
Her husband said that the clinic tried to settle the matter out of court and offered 200,000 yuan (approx Rs 22.6 lakh) but he thought that 1 million was the least they could offer for a person’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 conduct the procedure and all the doctors involved in Liu’s procedures were legally licensed. During the liposuction, the volume of fat removed complied with medical standards. During the legal proceedings, the clinic maintained that Liu was responsible for understanding the risks of cosmetic surgery, the argued that the autopsy report alone did not provide sufficient ground to substantiate the claims of malpractice.
Despite requests from multiple court-appointed agencies for the clinic to provide its 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 compensation of more than one million yuan. But last year, the clinic appealed, and the court revised the compensation to 590,000 yuan (approx Rs 66.7 lakh) and acknowledged that the clinic had partial responsibility for the incident.
According to SCMP, the evaluation indicated that Liu’s health may have contributed to her death, which led the court to conclude a shared liability between her and the clinic.
Citing 2020 data from iResearch Consulting, SCMP reported only 24 per cent of practitioners in China’s plastic surgery industry are legally licensed, with more than 100,000 operating illegally. These illegal procedures can result in around 100,000 cases of disability or death annually.