July’s Florida Department of Health complaint makes 4 against a Miami plastic surgeon
This month’s Florida Department of Health administrative complaint against Dr. Julio Clavijo-Alvarez makes four pending complaints against the Miami and Coral Gables plastic surgeon and hair restoration doctor.
Administrative complaints start the process toward potential Board of Medicine discipline.
The latest complaint against Clavijo-Alvarez, the second this year, concerns his actions after a patient “became unresponsive” after a 2022 operation dealing with excess skin and fat. Another patient’s post-op problems and Clavijo-Alvarez’s reactions to them after a 2021 Brazilian butt lift formed the basis for the complaint filed in March.
Clavijo-Alvarez performed that BBL surgery at New Life Plastic Surgery, one of the office surgery centers that advertise Clavijo-Alvarez as a surgeon. New Life is also where a state inspector said in another complaint that prescriptions for oxycodone and diazepam sat in an unsecured area without any patient’s name but already with Clavijo-Alvarez’s signature.
The fourth complaint concerned inspection violations at Miami Lakes Cosmetic Surgery, 15450 New Barn Rd., where Clavijo-Alvarez used to be the designated physician. Inspection violations at a surgery center result in complaints filed against the center and the designated physician, the doctor with the top responsibility for making sure the center operates within state guidelines.
READ MORE: Unqualified staff, illegal surgeries at Miami Lakes Cosmetic Surgery, state says
Clavijo-Alvarez hasn’t returned phone messages or emails from the Miami Herald about the complaints.
Though the American Board of Plastic Surgery certified doctor is advertised on the 305 Plastic Surgery website, none of the 305 Plastic Surgery locations list Clavijo-Alvarez among their practitioners with the Florida Department of Health. He is listed among the cutters at New Life Plastic Surgery, 8400 SW Eighth St. He also runs Ai Hair Transplant Miami and Ai Gaia Medspa out of a Coral Gables office on Ponce de Leon Boulevard.
Gaia, the Art of Plastic Surgery, which Google says will be run out of the same building as New Life, occupies a spot on the web, and Clavijo-Alvarez registered a “Gaia Plastic Surgery Associates” as a corporation. But an online search of Florida Department of Health records turns up no license associated with the word “Gaia.”
The latest complaint, filed July 1, didn’t say which workspace Clavijo-Alvarez was using, but did say the problem concerned a surgery on May 24, 2022.
READ MORE: A surgeon knowingly used an unqualified gas passer in BBL death
Fat moving and a heart stopping
The patient, named in the complaint as “TP,” came to Clavijo-Alvarez with what the complaint said was “dermatochalasis of the abdomen and lipodystrophy of the back.”
Dermatochalasis is an excess of skin and fat, usually identified as occurring around the eyes (“bags under your eyes”), but in this case occuring around the abdomen. The Cleveland Clinic says “Lipodystrophy is a condition that’s characterized by a complete or partial loss of and/or abnormal distribution of fat tissue in certain areas of your body.”
“After completion of the procedure, TP became unresponsive in the postoperative care area,” the complaint said. TP had an irregular heartbeat of “ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia.”
The Mayo Clinic says ventricular fibrillation is a “life-threatening complication” of ventricular tachycardia that “can cause all heart activity to suddenly stop, called ‘sudden cardiac arrest.’ Emergency treatment is needed to prevent death.”
The complaint said Clavijo-Alvarez gave TP 300 mg of amiodarone, which, the Mayo Clinic says, slows the irregular heartbeat.
But, the complaint said, the doctor “failed to meet the minimum standard of care by failing to ensure that cardiac defibrillation was administered three consecutive times” before giving amiodarone.
The complaint gave no information on TP’s current condition.
