January 4, 2000 --
The death rate for liposuction, the popular cosmetic surgery performed mainly in doctors' offices and clinics, is 20 to 60 times higher than the death rate for all operations performed in hospitals, a newly published survey shows.
Hospital patients undergoing all types of surgery, including risky procedures on the sickest of the sick, die at a rate of 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 300,000.
But the liposuction survey, in which 917 plastic surgeons voluntarily reported deaths caused by liposuction in exchange for confidentiality, shows that for every 5,000 liposuction procedures from 1994 to 1998, one patient died - 95 in all. Among the causes were blood clots, anesthesia problems and internal injuries after the liposuction procedure.
More than 172,000 Americans have liposuction, a procedure in which fat is sucked out of thighs, bellies and other parts of the body, every year by board certified plastic surgeons. Any doctor can perform liposuction, so the actual tally may be more than double that.
Because liposuction is widely regarded as simple and safe, the high death rate of comes as a shock to patients and medical safety advocates.
"The difference (in death rates) is gigantic," says Ellison Pierce, executive director of the Anesthesiology Patient Safety Foundation, which has been at the forefront of a national effort to reduce medical errors. "That's a completely unacceptable mortality rate."
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