Land of liposuction faces the backlash

France, the country at the forefront of cosmetic surgery, is facing a surge of criticism following the trial in Bordeaux of two doctors accused of negligence in operations that went disastrously wrong.

In one case, a specialist is accused of pressing ahead with liposuction and stomach-reduction despite unacceptably high risks. His patient, 55, died two days later.

In the second case, a 53-year-old is suing a non-specialist doctor after she developed a serious infection from a fat-reduction operation.

The two cases have drawn attention to a boom in cosmetic surgery in France, the country which invented liposuction and has led the way in other forms of body-altering surgery. In some cases - including the fatal case in Bordeaux - cosmetic surgery is paid for by the French health service.

Christine Maze, the defence lawyer in both cases in Bordeaux, said: "These are unacceptable tragedies in comfort operations which had no medical necessity."

In the first case a criminal action had already been brought against the Dr Denis Delonca, and thrown out. His patient, Bernadette Meline, a mother of five, was cremated without an autopsy. Investigators said they could establish no definite link between her death and the operation.

Her family has now brought a civil action, arguing that the doctor - and an anaesthetist and heart specialist - took unnecessarily high risks in allowing an obese woman with high blood pressure to have an operation for no pressing medical reason.

Dr Delonca's lawyers argue that the fact that the operation was approved, and paid for, by the Securite Sociale, proves that it was medically justified.

Meline's family says Dr Delonca did not give her sufficient warning of the risks, which were first brought to her attention by the anaesthetist eight days before she went into surgery.

In the second case, Clotilde Besse, 53, contracted a serious infection which put her in hospital for six weeks. She had been given a liposuction operation on her legs by Claverie, a non-specialist.

The infection was traced to the fact that she did not have a shower before the operation. The doctor says that he was not made aware of that fact. But her lawyers - and the clinic - contend that Claverie said she should skip the shower to retain the marks he had made on her legs to guide his work.

The Tribunal de Grande Instance has reserved judgment. The decision to hear both cases in the same court has led to questions about cosmetic surgery boom. The newspaper Liberation headed its report "cosmetic surgery on trial".

The cosmetic surgery industry estimates that there were 200,000 operations last year, double the number 10 years ago.

Breast enlargement operations are up 50 per cent to 18,000. One in five of all cosmetic operations in France, 40,000 a year, are liposuctions, a procedure that sucks fat from beneath the skin. The latest boom is cosmetic surgery for men, especially face-lifting and eyebrows operations to turn back the years.

An investigation by the newspaper Le Canard Enchaine two years ago found that the health service was spending 1 billion a year on cosmetic surgery.

- INDEPENDENT