Powell plastic surgeon who livestreamed operations has license suspended

A Powell-based plastic surgeon who attracted a sizable following on social media — in part by livestreaming surgical operations — cannot practice medicine or surgery in Ohio for the time being.

The State Medical Board of Ohio voted on Nov. 18 to issue a notice of summary suspension to Katherine Roxanne Grawe, known to her thousands of followers as Dr. Roxy.

That means Grawe's license is temporarily suspended until the board makes a final decision.

Next steps include a hearing requested by Grawe that will be held on May 15 and continue through May 19 as needed, a medical board spokesperson said.

A hearing examiner will hear the case and make a recommendation to the medical board. At a public meeting, the full board will deliberate on the recommendation and make a final decision.

The medical board said the summary suspension came after "clear and convincing" evidence arose that Grawe's continued practice presented "a danger of immediate and serious harm to the public."

Grawe also is being sued by at least four women in Franklin County who say they faced complications after their surgeries.

According to the notice of suspension filed online, the secretary of the State Medical Board had cautioned Graw at least twice in the past four years about the need to maintain patient privacy when sharing photos or video on social media.

Grawe's office declined comment when contacted by The Dispatch. Her attorney, Sabrina Sellers, did not immediately respond for comment.

In September 2021, Grawe was strongly urged by the secretary of the board to undertake remedial education courses related to plastic surgery complications, professionalism and ethics. She was asked to provide certificates of completion of the courses, along with summaries about what she learned and how she would apply it to her future practice.

After completing the remedial education courses, the board alleges Grawe continued to film and broadcast live the medical procedures of some patients until on or about Oct. 14.

"Aspects of these productions include, but are not limited to, preoperative photos, preoperative interviews with patients about their bodies, livestreams of procedures, postoperative still images of patients taken in the operating room, and the cost of the procedure," the notice addressed to Grawe reads. "During some videos/live-streams you engage in dialogue to respond to viewers' online questions while the surgical procedure remains actively ongoing."

The board cited three patients who reported having complications after Grawe performed surgery on them at her practice, Roxy Plastic Surgery.

In one case, a patient was sent to the emergency room by a nurse practitioner at Roxy Plastic Surgery less than a week after receiving liposuction, a Brazilian butt lift and a skin-tightening procedure from Grawe. Free air was found in her abdomen and medical staff determined she was suffering from hepatic encephalopathy, or loss of brain function when a damaged liver doesn't remove toxins from the blood.

The patient was quickly transferred to another hospital for further evaluation and treatment. There, she underwent exploratory surgery and surgeons found her bowel had been perforated and she had a serious bacterial infection. The patient required a prolonged stay with multiple debridements, or procedures to remove dead tissue, open abdomen and skin grafting, according to Grawe's notice of suspension.

At least part of her procedure at Grawe's office was livestreamed on social media, according to the board, which said Grawe was looking and speaking to the camera while performing liposuction on the patient's abdomen.

"Despite liposuction being a blind surgery that requires awareness of the tip of the cannula (thin tube) to avoid injury, your attention to the camera meant at those moments you were not looking at the patient or palpating the location of the tip of the cannula," the suspension notice reads.

The board said Grawe also failed to provide or failed to document providing discharge instructions concerning specific information about lidocaine toxicity to that patient.

A different patient who underwent exploratory surgery after Grawe gave her liposuction, a Brazilian butt lift, umbilical hernia repair and skin-tightening, was found to have six enterotomies, or surgical incisions in her intestines, and multiple serosal tears. According to the suspension notice, part of that patient's small bowel was removed, repairs were made to the small bowel, and she received a partial omentectomy, where the fatty tissue that covers a human's stomach, large intestine and other organs is removed.

Grawe operated at Mount Carmel St. Ann's Hospital in Westerville in addition to her practice. In a statement, Mount Carmel Health System said Grawe's clinical privileges were suspended at St. Ann's as soon as it learned of Grawe's suspension by the State Medical Board.

The Dispatch previously reported in 2016 that a breast cancer survivor who received breast-reconstruction surgery from Grawe won a $358,000 jury verdict against the Delaware County physician. In her 2014 lawsuit, Mary Jenkins said that Grawe's attempts to address complications from the surgery, which included leech therapy rather than surgery, "were professionally negligent and fell well below accepted standards of medical care."

Grawe's TikTok account, @doctorroxy, which had more than 842,000 followers and 14.6 million likes as of Thursday morning, and her Instagram profile are marked private. The Roxy Plastic Surgery YouTube page, which lists nearly 9,000 subscribers, had no videos on Thursday.

According to her website, Grawe received her plastic surgery training at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and has had her private practice since 2010.

Monroe Trombly covers breaking and trending news.

mtrombly@dispatch.com

@monroetrombly

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Powell surgeon who livestreamed operations has license suspended