One woman is dead, and two others were left with severe complications after visiting a Mexican doctor for discounted plastic surgery procedures. Keuana Weaver and Kanisha Davis had a lot of free time due to the pandemic, so they decided to get liposuction and tummy tucks, reported The San Diego Tribune. The friends chose Dr. Jesús Manuel Báez López, director of Art Siluette Aesthetic Surgery, a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. They made the trip, and their procedures were performed on January 29.
Only one of them made it home. Weaver died on the operating table. Her cause of death was listed as “secondary hypoxic encephalopathy,” a brain injury caused by oxygen deprivation. She was 38-years-old and left behind two children. Renee Weaver, Keuana’s mother, thought she traveled to Florida for the surgery and found out about the actual location after the death.
“I’m heartbroken. I want to know what happened,” she told The San Diego Tribune.
After Davis heard about Weaver’s death, she left Tijuana and went home to California. Eventually, she began to experience her own complications. Internal bleeding and projectile vomiting sent her to the hospital for two weeks. Doctors found a hematoma.
“If I hadn’t gone into the hospital when I did, I would have died,” she said. “Did we know we were taking a risk being in Mexico? Yes. But did we ever, at any time, think that risk would be death? No.”
Davis, a nurse, noticed red flags while she was in Tijuana after realizing the medical staff hadn’t hooked her to any monitors.
“They didn’t check my hemo. They just kept sedating me and sedating me,” said Davis.
Hemo refers to a hemoglobin test that checks for blood disorders and issues with carrying oxygen to the body. “And me being a nurse, I knew something was off.”
She was also concerned because she was sent to a hotel room in Tijuana to recover.
The day Davis and Weaver had their procedures, Esmeralda Iniguez went under the knife. A few days after Weaver’s death, she had to be rushed to the hospital because she was in septic shock.
“He tightened my abdominal muscles too much, squishing all my organs together and cutting off blood supply to my kidneys, causing something called Abdominal Compartment Syndrome,” Iniguez told The San Diego Tribune.
“I was so septic by the time I reached the ER in Chula Vista on February 3rd. I was literally hours from death. My kidneys were shutting down.”
Iniguez is currently on dialysis.
Báez López, the doctor, is not a certified plastic surgeon. The clinic’s website claimed he received a master’s degree from a Mexican institution in “aesthetic surgery.” Three years before, he reportedly earned a Bachelor’s degree as a general physician.
State officials in Baja California, the Mexican state where Tijuana is located, informed The San Diego Tribune the incidents are under investigation.
“We’re working very hard to make sure that doctors who are practicing without the proper credentials are immediately shut down and are investigated by the Attorney General,” Atzimba Villegas, the state director of medical tourism, told the newspaper. “It’s essential for the entire industry that patients feel safe and are well cared for and get the results they are looking for.”
