A Colorado teenager suffered cardiac arrest during a breast
implant procedure in August and is now severely brain-damaged, according to her
family, who filed a lawsuit against her plastic surgeon and nurse last week.
Emmalyn Nguyen, 18, went under the knife for breast
augmentation to be performed by Dr. Geoffrey Kim at Colorado Aesthetics and
Plastic Surgery on Aug. 1. She was given anesthesia around 2 p.m. for the
procedure, which roughly 400,000 women in the U.S. undergo each year.
“I was fine with it. We didn’t think anything like that was
going to happen to our daughter. I was a teenage girl once before," her
mother, Lynn Fam, told KCNC-TV, adding her daughter saved up $6,000 for the
surgery. "To us, it felt safe."
While at the surgery facility in Greenwood Village, Nguyen
"was left unobserved in the operating room" for 15 minutes after she
was administered the anesthesia by nurse anesthetist Rex Meeker, according to
the lawsuit filed Wednesday.
At around 2:15 that day, employees of the plastic surgery
office "discovered that Ms. Nguyen’s lips and face were blue and that
cyanosis was quickly spreading to her upper extremities and torso." Nguyen
went into cardiac arrest and no one "immediately" attempted to
resuscitate the 18-year-old, her family claims in the suit.
For the next five hours after she was anesthetized, she
suffered two cardiac arrests and remained "neurologically
unresponsive." It wasn't until 7:30 p.m. that Meeker called 911 — what Fam
described as "a really long time."
“I just had kind of a
weird feeling,” Fam said after the two-hour-long procedure stretched on for
much longer than scheduled. She said staff members of the facility repeatedly
misled her about what was happening. She even claims that at one point, Dr. Kim
told her all was well with her daughter.
"Everything went fine. The only thing is we didn’t
proceed with the procedure because her heart rate dropped but she is
fine," Fam told the news outlet of the doctor. "He said, 'Everything
is fine, Emmalyn is fine, everything is good. She’s young, she’s healthy,
she’ll be okay, it’s just taking her long to wake up.”
Once Meeker called first responders, Nguyen was transported
to a hospital. She spent 22 days there before being taken to a rehab facility,
where Fam says Nguyen remains in a "minimally conscious state." She
apparently can't eat, talk, walk or take care of herself, as she's suffered
severe brain damage, according to her family.
To me, it’s a miracle she pulled through all that and she is
still fighting this. I don’t know how they can sleep at night knowing they did
this to her," Fam told KCNC. "They ruined Emmalyn’s life — not just
hers but all of ours.”
While breast augmentation is a common procedure, the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons says there are dangers — and the first on
their list is "anesthesia risks."
This adverse anesthesia situation isn't the first for
Meeker, the anesthetist, according to KCNC, which reported a patient of his
undergoing a breast augmentation in 2009 died one month after surgery. State
records show Meeker was not disciplined for what happened, per the news outlet.
Fam acknowledged a lawsuit won't bring her daughter back,
but said it could answer what happened to 18-year-old Nguyen.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/colorado-teen-brain-damaged-breast-implant-surgery
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