Chinese teen who died during cosmetic surgery had severe reaction to anaesthetic
- Autopsy finds 19-year-old nursing student Xia Lisha suffered from a rare condition that affects one in 50,000 patients, according to Guizhou hospital
A Chinese teenager who died during a cosmetic procedure in southern China had a severe reaction to the anaesthetic, an autopsy has found.
Xia Lisha, a 19-year-old student, died while she was having plastic surgery on her nose at Guizhou Limeikang Surgical Hospital in Guiyang last month.
A post-mortem examination showed that she had suffered from a rare reaction to the drugs she was given during the surgery, news website bjnews.com.cn reported on Friday.
Guizhou Medical University, which carried out the autopsy, confirmed that the teenager had suffered from malignant hyperthermia, which affects one in 50,000 anaesthetised patients, Limeikang said in a statement posted on Weibo.
The condition causes the heart rate to speed up, along with other symptoms including high fever and muscle tension.
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Xia, a second-year nursing student who thought her nose was too flat, started saving money for a rhinoplasty last year, according to Qianjiang Evening News. Her mother, surnamed Wang, told the newspaper her daughter wanted to improve her appearance before she began her nursing career.
She had saved up more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,490) within a year from working several part-time jobs, her mother said. But Wang, alarmed by stories that students had turned to loan sharks to pay for cosmetic procedures, decided to help her daughter pay for the surgery.
Wang told the newspaper she wanted her daughter to get the best treatment, so she took her to Limeikang, which claims to be the biggest cosmetic surgery provider in Guizhou, and asked for the hospital’s top surgeon.
But according to the report, she was not told when Xia was transferred to another hospital for emergency treatment, and it took doctors seven hours to tell her that Xia had died.
The hospital later apologised to Wang for failing to tell her earlier about the complications during the operation, the newspaper said.
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More people are going under the knife in China as incomes rise and Western influences grow.
According to the Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics, about 4 million Chinese younger than 30 had cosmetic surgery in 2017 – almost half of the total number.
Cosmetic surgery app Gengmei estimated that the industry in China was worth 495.3 billion yuan last year.
