KEY POINTS:
A woman believed her breasts were rotting off her chest after a breast reduction went wrong and left her with gaping holes and a putrid-smelling infection, the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal was told in Napier today.
The surgeon who performed the operation is charged with professional misconduct while
the woman was in his care from the end of 2004 until March 2005. He has interim name suppression.
The woman told the tribunal today she had been told by the surgeon her dream to have her size 20GG breasts become D cups was achievable.
"(He) did not at any time recommend to me that a different procedure was performed, that I should lose weight, or anything," the woman said.
"I felt that what I was wanting would be easy to achieve and fairly routine."
She said in one consultation the surgeon mentioned the risk of infection but she was made to feel it was rare and did not worry.
"He did not talk at all about the possibility of tissue loss. And he did not say that there was an increased risk of anything as a result of my size, the size of my breasts, the fact that I smoked."
After the operation the woman visited the surgeon most days for the first week.
But six days later she said she felt "tired, scratchy and things were a bit of a blur".
The next morning she woke to find her bed saturated in blood and brown discharge which was coming from her left breast.
She saw the surgeon the next day and he took a sample for testing.
The next day she was changing her own dressings every two hours because of the amount of fluid leaking from her wounds.
"The discharge smelt awful. It was a horrible sickly smell like when you leave meat in the sun. I was starting to hate the sight of my breasts," the woman said.
On the next day, after watching liquid dribble from her breasts down her body while she showered, the woman went back to the surgeon who gave her an x-ray.
She asked why it was needed and was told one swab had been missing at the end of her operation.
"I continued to feel miserable and I slept a lot. My breasts were sore and smelt bad. I wondered if they were rotting off," she said.
The woman said she couldn't afford to go anywhere to have the surgery fixed so tried to stay friendly with the surgeon who she said she still trusted.
Two weeks after the surgery he removed some stitches and revealed gaping holes and without anaesthetic cut away dead flesh.
"I felt as though it was torture," the woman said.
"It was not that the process was physically painful but the 'snip, snip, snip' of him cutting out the flesh drove me insane."
She took a CD to one appointment to block out the noise but when she sat up a chunk of flesh fell off her stomach onto the floor.
The woman went back to her GP who referred her to a reconstructive surgeon who cleaned up her breasts so they could heal.
She has since had four reconstructive operations but said there was still extensive scarring and disfigurement.
The tribunal also heard from the woman's aunty who had been with her to appointments, her grandmother, and Auckland surgeon Garth Poole.
All were questioned by the surgeon's lawyer Jonathan Krebs who said the woman had not wanted to know any graphic details of the surgery, had been in a hurry to leave hospital the day after the operation and had not asked about the risks.
The hearing continues.
- NZPA
