Medical Board Forms Panel to Probe Cosmetic Surgery

The state licensing board for doctors has formed a committee to investigate the practice of cosmetic surgery in California, prodded in part by the deaths of two liposuction patients in Southern California.

The idea originally stemmed from concerns about the increasing migration of nonspecialist doctors into the potentially lucrative field of cosmetic surgery, said Doug Laue, deputy director of the Medical Board of California. But the deaths of the two liposuction patients, one in Orange County in March and another in Lynwood in June 1996, “definitely moved up the timetable,” he said.

The Orange County case involved a woman who died after 11 hours of liposuction surgery performed by an experienced plastic surgeon, Dr. W. Earle Matory Jr. In the Lynwood case, an obstetrician, Dr. Patrick Chavis, was accused of botching a surgery that led to the death of a 43-year-old woman. Judges suspended both physicians, pending disciplinary hearings, from the practice of medicine.

Although one case involved a cosmetic surgery specialist and the other did not, both caused critics to question whether liposuction, and cosmetic surgery in general, might be under-regulated.

Laue said the new panel, consisting of three doctors and a nonphysician, would at first simply gather facts about who is practicing cosmetic surgery and under what circumstances. Later, depending upon the panel’s findings, the medical board may make recommendations for regulatory changes.

Although the panel will focus on physicians, its formation coincides with reports that nonphysicians are practicing liposuction as well. Earlier this week, a nurse who assisted Chavis was arrested on four felony counts of practicing medicine without a license, authorities said.

The nurse, Carlitha Martez Allen, faces up to five years in prison if convicted. She also has been suspended from the practice of nursing pending a hearing on allegations of performing surgeries and prescribing medication without a license.

In a San Bernardino County case last month, a man who supposedly is licensed as a doctor in South America was accused of homicide after he performed liposuction surgery on a 52-year-old woman who later died.