A plastic surgeon in Colorado has been sentenced to just 15 days in jail after his staff administered an excessive amount of anesthetic to a teenager during a breast augmentation surgery, resulting in her death, per FOX News.
Convicted of attempted reckless manslaughter and obstructing 911 services, Dr. Geoffrey Kim, 54, will face jail, two years probation, $70,000 fines, 120 hours community service, and an indefinitely suspended medical license by the Colorado Medical Board.
Emmalyn Nguyen, an 18-year-old high school graduate, had saved $6,000 for a procedure that was performed on August 1, 2019. Her mother told CBS News in December of that year, Emmalyn was still alive but in a vegetative state. Tragically, after being in a coma for 14 months, she passed away at the age of 19 while receiving hospice care. Despite her heart still beating, her brain had suffered serious damage due to a lack of oxygen, the family’s attorney, David Woodruff, told Fox News Digital.
The nurses who worked with Kim testified that they wanted to call for help when Nguyen’s heart stopped during her breast augmentation, but Kim told them not to after he revived her with CPR.
“The huge travesty here is the location of this office is in a parking lot shared by a fire department, and the EMTs could have been there in 45 seconds to a minute,”
Woodruff said in court.
As hours went by, Kim repeatedly assured Nguyen’s mother that her daughter was fine until the woman insisted on seeing her daughter, at which point emergency services were contacted.
According to Colorado Medical Board documents, Rex Meeker, the ex-anesthetist at the Greenwood clinic in Colorado, willingly gave up his license. Investigators discovered Meeker had administered seven times the required dosage of fentanyl to the teenager. Kim settled with Nguyen’s family outside of court, paying them a reported $1 million, per CBS News.
#Clique, what are your thoughts?
