Woman who died after ‘butt lift’ surgery did not give informed consent, Bolton coroner rules
A 26-year-old woman died after being subjected to a ‘frankly barbaric’ Brazilian butt lift procedure without giving informed consent, a coroner has ruled.
Demi Agoglia traveled to Turkey for the surgery after seeing celebrity messages of support for Istanbul-based Comfort Zone Surgery on social media.
The mother-of-three was said to be “conscious of how she looked” and insisted on having the procedure, which involves taking fat from elsewhere on the body and injecting it into the hips and buttocks.
Her partner, Bradley Jones, said he did not want Agoglia to have the surgery, but that she had booked the trip months earlier after seeing “a celebrity” approve of it online.
Immediately after the operation she was shaking and looked “very, very cold”, he told Bolton coroner court.
Comfort Zone staff were called to the villa where she was staying after Agoglia complained of chest tightness. They checked her blood pressure but did not inspect the surgical area or check her heart rate and pulse, the investigation found.
Agoglia subsequently collapsed at the villa and was taken back to a hospital in Istanbul, where she died on January 8, three days after the operation.
It later emerged that the Comfort Zone staff called to the villa were not qualified nurses. The inquest heard that their “utterly bizarre” actions included trying to feed chunks of cucumber to Agoglia after she collapsed.
Dr. Omar Tillo, a plastic surgeon from Harley Street, told the inquest: “The lack of proper care and response, particularly the inability to manage post-operative complications, is likely to have played a significant role in Demi’s tragic outcome.”
Bolton coroner John Pollard ruled the medical cause of death was a microscopic fat embolism where tissue leaked into the bloodstream. Concluding that Agoglia had died as a result of a misadventure caused by neglect, he said: “I find that in this matter there was no proper informed consent, there was no proper pre-operative care and advice, and there was no proper post-operative care.
“All this meant that the care overall fell well below the standard that could be expected from this type of treatment and that the lack of care contributed significantly to Demi’s death.”
Pollard said he would write to Health Secretary Wes Streeting, adding: “I feel that something further needs to be done to prevent this frankly barbaric medical practice from being carried out to such low standards that it is -Britain would certainly not be tolerated.”
The inquest found that the coroner’s office had sent several emails to the Turkish hospital and the surgeons involved seeking explanations but had received no response.