Costa de la Luz
Cádiz plastic surgeon ordered to compensate patient for removing her healthy breast
By m.p. - Oct 27, 2009 - 2:42 PM
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A breast cancer march in Madrid earlier this month - EFE
The surgery was intended to reconstruct the other breast she had lost to cancer
A plastic surgeon has been ordered to pay 80,000 € compensation to a patient admitted to a Cádiz clinic for breast reconstruction surgery after he mistakenly removed her healthy breast. Named by La Voz de Cádiz as Isabel Oliva, aged 43, she underwent a mastectomy of the left breast in 2002 and, two years later, decided to have it reconstructed.
It was when she came around from the surgery that she discovered the surgeon, J.L.N.M., had instead removed her right breast, which tests had shown to be completely healthy.
She’s been fighting since then for compensation and the court has now ruled that the surgeon performed the mastectomy without permission and without any minimal evidence that it was advisable to remove the healthy breast. Isabel Oliva told La Voz she would have been happy with an apology or even an explanation, neither of which were offered by her surgeon when she visited him to request his report on the operation.
‘He didn’t even ask me how I was,’ she adds, ‘he could at least have shown a little humanity’.