A Colorado plastic surgeon and nurse responsible for a botched breast augmentation surgery in 2019 that led to the death of teenage patient Emmalyn Nguyen have been arrested and charged.
Nguyen visited the Colorado Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery for a breast augmentation surgery on August 1, 2019, the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office said. During the procedure she suffered cardiac arrest after being administered anesthesia.
According to authorities, surgeon Dr. Geoffrey Kim did not call for emergency help, nor did he take her to the hospital for about five hours as he continued the breast augmentation.
A 2019 lawsuit filed by the Nguyen family claimed that the doctors left her “unobserved” for 15 minutes after they administered the anesthesia, during which time she went into cardiac arrest, turned blue, and stopped breathing.
The teen suffered brain damage and fell into a coma. She was unable to speak, walk or feed herself and required around-the-clock medical care. On October 4, 2020, fourteen months after the surgery, Emmalyn Nguyen died.
“It appears that Emmalyn stopped breathing because of improper anesthesia, administered by a nurse instead of an anesthesiologist,” David Woodruff, the attorney representing Nguyen’s parents, told PEOPLE in 2019. “But the worst thing is she appears to have been left unattended, not breathing, for up to 15 minutes. It caused her to suffer a massive anoxic brain injury.”
Medical authorities said that both Dr. Kim and nurse anesthetist Rex Meeker had an obligation to contact emergency services.
Dr. Kim has been charged with reckless manslaughter and first-degree aggravated assault, both felonies, while Meeker was charged with reckless manslaughter. Kim turned himself in last month and was released on a $5,000 bond.
Last year, Dr. Kim and Meeker agreed to pay $1 million each to the family as part of a settlement, CBS Denver reported. Attorney Woodruff said most of the money would go towards medical bills.
“We opened this case in August 2019. The investigation has taken more than two years to complete and involved dozens of interviews and search warrants,” Captain Travis Stewart, of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release. “Our hope is that this will be the beginning of bringing justice and a sense of closure to Emmalyn’s family.”
According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Global Survey Results, breast augmentation is the most popular surgical procedure globally. In 2018, plastic surgeons performed nearly 2 million breast augmentations, which accounted for 17.6% of the total cosmetic surgical procedures. From 2014 to 2018, a 27.6% rise in case volume was observed. In 2018, 98.8% of those operations were performed on women, over half of whom were 19–34-years old.
Research published in 2019 in the journal Current Psychology established a correlation between social media use and a desire for cosmetic surgery, and noted that at present there exists “a large body of research” that has “documented the influence of traditional media formats on young women’s consideration of cosmetic surgery.”
Another 2020 study found that the use of social media among young women motivated their decision to undergo breast augmentation, stating, “Social media influences patients’ education and decisions to undergo breast augmentation, with Instagram being the most impactful.”
Reduxx is a newly-launched, independent source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re able to continue our work exposing predators and reporting the truth thanks to the generous support of our readers.
