When Thaynara Braz Alves, 28, underwent a tummy tuck and breast augmentation earlier this year, her three children thought they would only have to wait a few weeks before she would be fit enough to play with them. .
Heartbreakingly, they would never see their mother again.
The young woman, from Brazil, he died less than 24 hours after his surgery due to catastrophic cardiac arrest.
The Brazilian clinic where she was operated on had passed a routine inspection by authorities just two weeks earlier.
But it turns out that Ms. Alves’s surgeon had had multiple previous lawsuits against him for mutilation and improper surgical technique. The police are now opening an investigation into Mrs Alves’ case.
Thaynara Braz Alves was on her first trip back to Brazil in three years to have the procedure. She is survived by her three children, ages 12, seven and two.
Ms Alves, originally from Brazil but living in Belgium, was one of a growing number of people traveling across international borders to undergo cosmetic procedures.
Brazil performs the second highest number of plastic surgeries in the world, just behind the United States. The industry has grown 10 percent each year since 2010, CNBC reported.
But procedures in the South American country cost less than half of what they cost in the United States. This is one reason why approximately 6.9 percent of all cosmetic surgeries in Brazil in 2022 were performed on foreigners.
In April, a Los Angeles mother named Tan’Quasha Williams, 30, died after a botched “mommy makeover” in Mexico.
It is unclear why Ms Alves decided to return to Brazil for the first time in three years for her procedure.
She chose to have the surgery at the HD Bellagio clinic in the Pampulha region of Brazil, in a city called Belo Horizonte on May 28.
Her surgeries, which included a breast lift, implants and a tummy tuck, appeared routine, her doctors reported. Still, as a precaution, Mrs. Alves spent the night at the clinic for observation.
Early in the morning of May 29, Mrs. Alves complained that she was not feeling well: her body ached and her heart began to beat irregularly. It became clear that she was going to go into cardiac arrest.
The clinic staff called doctors who successfully resuscitated her. But less than an hour later, she had a second arrest and she died. O Tempo Cidades reported.
Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops pumping, cutting off blood flow to the heart and other crucial regions of the body, such as the brain. This represents the death of between 300,000 and 450,000 Americans each year.
This most commonly happens when someone develops an irregular heartbeat, called an arrhythmia, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Half the time, people who go into cardiac arrest had no idea they had an arrhythmia, the NIH says.
Cardiac arrest is not a common side effect of plastic surgery, but it is possible. When performed correctly, abdominoplasty and breast surgeries are a very safe procedure, but abdominoplasty is the riskier of the two.
About four percent of patients who choose to undergo abdominoplasty have major complications, according to research from the American Society of Plastic Surgery.
That’s significantly more than the 1.4 percent average for all other cosmetic procedures.
Common complications include bruising, blood clots, infections, and lung-related problems.
Abdominoplasty procedures are believed to be especially risky because they involve removing large amounts of fatty tissue from the stomach. Fat contains a large number of blood vessels, which means that interfering with it risks significant blood loss.
Other procedures that leave the fat intact carry fewer risks.
The risk of these surgeries can be compounded if someone decides to have more than one surgery at a time. If you choose to add a second procedure on top of a tummy tuck (the medical term for abdominoplasty), your risk of developing complications more than doubles: to ten percent.
There were nearly 162,000 tummy tucks in the U.S. in 2022, and as they have become more common over the years, they have become safer to perform, said Dr. Michael Stein, plastic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, he told US News and Reports.
But not all doctors perform these procedures with the same rigor.
The HD Bellagio was the subject of a government inspection two weeks ago. They reported that “no irregularities were found” at the clinic.
However, at least eight previous legal cases have been filed against Ms. Alvezs’s surgeon, The Antagonist, a Brazilian political news site, reported.
This includes charges for use of incorrect surgical materials, mutilation and “necrosis events.”
The clinic publicly stated that they are cooperating with the investigation, but shared that they believe the procedures were carried out “without complications, following all medical protocols.”
In the same statement they expressed their condolences to the Alves family. “We want to express our deepest condolences to the family and friends, who will continue to be welcomed by our team.”
Mrs. Alves was buried on May 30. Her eldest surviving daughter, 12, remembered her in a tribute on Instagram.
It said: “I can’t understand the fact that my mother, such a beautiful and strong woman, is gone. It feels like a nightmare.”
‘Mom, if I had known that was our last hug, I would never have let you go.’
