Chinese woman brain dead after plastic surgery

By Jung Min-ho

A Chinese woman is brain dead after undergoing plastic surgery at a clinic in southern Seoul.

The incident could put a brake on Korea’s medical tourism industry which has been growing rapidly.

According to the Korean Association of Plastic Surgeons (KAPS), the woman experienced difficulty breathing while undergoing cosmetic surgery on Jan. 27. She was immediately taken to the nearby Samsung Medical Center, where she remains comatose.

The association claimed that the unidentified hospital has been run illegally by a person who doesn’t possess a medical doctor’s license.

“It was run immorally by an advertising agency official,” said KAPS. “The hospital has attracted medical tourists from China and other countries.”

KAPS plans to bring the case to the ethics commission of the Korean Medical Association.

The number of foreign patients coming to Korea has soared in recent years, from some 122,000 in 2011 to 210,000 in 2013. Of the 2013 figure, about 56,000 were Chinese, accounting for 27 percent of the total.

It is widely said that when Chinese patients come for treatment through a broker or an advertising agency, clinics pay about 20 percent of the medical fees to a middleman.

“Korean medical tourism will have no future unless the government tries hard to fix this problem, which has long been condoned without any legal protection,” said a plastic surgeon who refused to be named.

KAPS said that the practice of ghost surgery among doctors, when one surgeon is substituted for another without the patient’s knowledge, is rampant.

The association also noted that some doctors administer large doses of anesthesia in order to conceal the fact that a different surgeon performed the operation.

It said that stricter legal protections should be set up to control the under-regulated plastic surgery advertisements.

“They are the root cause of the problem. Many of them are not only misleading but also deceiving,” said the surgeon. “Korea is the only country that has ‘noted plastic surgeons’ that have not performed any surgery over the past 10 years.”