Dr. Behnaz Yazdanfar faces allegations of mistreatment involving 28 patients in a disciplinary hearing by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Lipo patient 'almost lost,' daughter testifies
July 14, 2009
Staff Reporter
Francine Mendelson lay in her bed, the mattress covered with a shower curtain, her clothing soaked with fluid oozing from numerous incisions in her body.
It was the aftermath of a 2007 liposuction procedure with Dr. Behnaz Yazdanfar who faces allegations of mistreatment involving 28 patients in a disciplinary hearing by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The 66-year-old Mendelson, who testified before the hearing panel today, underwent her cosmetic procedure at Yazdanfar's Toronto Cosmetic Clinic only months before another patient – Krista Stryland – would die hours after a similar liposuction procedure.
When Mendelson's husband, Aaron, picked her up from the clinic following the procedure she looked "horrible," he testified.
"I said (to clinic staff), 'You don't expect me to take this lady home like this.'"
He said staff told him they had no facilities for her to remain overnight.
As Mendelson lay weak and drenched in fluid at home, her daughter stayed awake with her all night changing her bandages, Stacey Mendelson testified yesterday.
"I was staggered by the amount of fluid loss," she said. "I was shocked she was allowed to leave the clinic like that ... We almost lost her."
Bandages and gauze were no match for the flow, she testified. So she purchased two boxes of maxi-pads which she placed on the incisions, changing them hourly in order to keep the wounds clean and dry.
She also removed a special sanitary compression garment to launder and dry it every so often.
That violated Yazdanfar's post-operative instructions to keep the garment on for the first 24 hours following surgery, the doctor's lawyer, Tracey Tremaine-Lloyd said today.
"By your completely ignoring the post-op instructions, your mother had more ... swelling and bruising than would otherwise be the case," she told Stacey Mendelson.
Francine Mendelson said that prior to the procedure she was repeatedly reassured she was a good candidate for liposuction.
"No one ever told me there was a risk of death. That was never used, that word ... I was told I would be sore for a couple of weeks and really that's the way I went into this."
A couple of days after the procedure, still weak, in pain and oozing fluid, Mendelson returned to the clinic.
When another doctor conducting an ultrasound saw her, Mendelson recalls him saying, "My God, what has happened here? This is brutal."
After Stryland's death hit the news two months later, Mendelson said she realized she had to file a complaint to the college because "I didn't want this to happen to anyone else."
Stacey Mendelson authored the complaint.
An expert report on the case, written for the college by Toronto plastic surgeon Dr. Craig Fielding, concludes Yazdanfar's care of Mendelson "falls below the standard of care for cosmetic surgery."
"The picture is of a patient at great risk. It would be prudent to have advised her to go immediately to the emergency department, but this was not done."
The removal of 8.8 litres of fluid, including more than 5 litres of fat, was "very aggressive," Fielding wrote. And it is "disturbing" that Mendelson was asked to pay $7,400 up front for the procedure with the understanding that she would forfeit half if she changed her mind.
"I do not feel Francine Mendelson was a good candidate for the surgery she underwent," Fielding wrote. "The surgery, furthermore, was performed outside the recommended guidelines for liposuction, whether 3, 4, or 5 litres, without overnight observations. These guidelines have been created, and widely accepted, because patients outside of them have more complications, up to death."
Yazdanfar's lawyers have challenged Fielding's observations with letters from their own experts who have written favourable reports about her quality of care.