A Miami plastic surgery doctor was punished after a Brazilian butt-lift patient died
A Miami Lakes board certified plastic surgeon has to do her next 10 Brazilian butt lifts under “the immediate supervision” of another board-certified plastic surgeon after the 2021 death of a patient.
That’s in the final order of the state Board of Medicine against Dr. Nidia De Jesus, who is now at Miami Lakes’ Divine Plastic Surgery, which posted Thursday.
De Jesus will also pay a $2,500 fine and $6,028 in Florida Department of Health case costs; have a letter of concern issued against her license; have to take a five-hour continuing medical education in laws, rules and ethics; a five-hour continuing medical education course in risk management; and give a one-hour lecture on complications related to liposuction and gluteal fat grafting to a medical staff.
According to the Florida Department of Health, De Jesus has been licensed since March 13, 2014, without any previous discipline. The American Board of Plastic Surgery says she has been board certified since since 2020.
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Deadly Brazilian butt lift
A Brazilian butt lift, liposuction with gluteal fat-grafting, involves fat being sucked out of the patient, usually from the abdomen area, and injected into the buttocks area. Florida law prohibits fat being injected into the gluteal muscle, however.
That’s what the Florida Department of Health complaint says De Jesus did to a BBL patient on Jan. 26, 2021. The Florida Department of Insurance Regulation report on the insurance payout said the surgery occurred at ibody Aesthetics, 51 SW 42nd Ave., with the patient going through post-surgery recovery at Recovery House Dolls-Getaway Miami.
The woman died five days later.
The complaint said the autopsy pinned her cause of death on a fatal brain injury caused by heart failure and lack of red blood cell circulation after cosmetic surgery. The large blood vessels of the patient’s right buttock were bleeding, but the corresponding vessels in the left buttock were fine, the complaint said the autopsy found. The difference in the two was the 4 cm “elongated tuft of fine fatty particles protruding from within” the woman’s right gluteal muscle.
“The autopsy further found microscopic fat emboli” in her heart’s arteries, the complaint said. De Jesus “knew, or should have known, that injecting fat into [the woman’s] gluteal musculature was strictly prohibited.”
The state insurance regulation report says Aspen American Insurance Company, which insured De Jesus, paid $250,000 in a settlement before a lawsuit was filed.
