But de Jong thinks the death rate might be higher than the survey shows if every doctor who performed liposuction could be surveyed. His survey went to only board-certified plastic surgeons, "the cream of the crop," he says.
The medical risks of what is largely considered a benign procedure raise larger questions about patient safety, says Ervin Moss, an anesthesiologist and patient-safety advocate who has lobbied for safety rules for office surgeries.
As many as 98,000 people are killed each year by medical mistakes, making it a leading killer in the USA. Moss and others have worked for years to implement "systems approaches" to medical safety in hospital operating rooms. The safety changes range from designing more error-proof machines to using simulators for cockpit-type crisis training. The work has helped drive the surgical death rate in hospitals down dramatically over the past 20 years, according to a recent Institute of Medicine report on the problem.
Moss says similar efforts are urgently needed in office-based surgery, which is becoming more common as doctors look for ways to treat their patients for less money. Performing surgery in the office is much cheaper and usually more profitable.
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