Nose job gone horribly wrong

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDDec 19 2010

A case presented to the Southwark Coroner’s Court heard that doctors continued operating on Kelly McLure, 31, after she suffered her cardiac arrest at the private Belvedere Hospital, in Kent. The paramedics were kept waiting for 45 minutes despite insisting on taking her straight to A&E. However her surgeons Dr Edward Latimer-Sayer and Dr Ahmed el Sayed Moustafa, the anaesthetist, continued with the routine nose and chin procedure after stabilizing her.

After the operation on November 22, 2005 Mrs McLure from Northamptonshire, suffered brain damage and she died six months later. The $9100 surgery was meant to be a simple hour-long procedure.

She was a Walmart sales executive and was suffering from a blood disorder that left her prone to deep vein thrombosis. Her condition was not discussed before her surgery until the day of the operation. This disorder raised the risk of her dying during surgery. Dr Keith Woods, her haematologist, had warned her of the dangers of the procedure. He said the risks of surgery were “unacceptably high”. Dr Moustafa said he was not told of Dr Woods’s concerns. He said he was “probably” told about Mrs McClure's disorder but he had not sought the advice of a haematologist despite never having encountered the condition before.

After going in for the surgery at 1pm, an hour later her pulse dramatically dropped before she went into cardiac arrest and an ambulance was called. She went into cardiac arrest for ten minutes while Dr Moustafa carried out cardiac massage and then administered adrenalin intravenously and directly into her heart. In spite of putting defibrillator pads on her chest, her heart was never shocked. After a pulse was detected paramedics and the matron of the Belvedere wanted Mrs McClure to be taken straight to A&E at Queen Elizabeth’s hospital in south London. But Dr Moustafa said she was “stable” and insisted the procedure could be completed. Paramedic Julie Carpenter said that ambulance staff arrived at the hospital at 2.14pm but were forced to wait for up to an hour while the doctors finished the surgery. The ambulance left an hour after it arrived, at 3.15pm.