Another story regarding patient safety and the importance of conducting extensive pre-surgical doctor screenings has come out, down under, in New Zealand.

New Zealand Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson has asked their national Medical Council to review a surgeon’s competence after a female patient complained about the services he provided.

The surgeon, known in the commissioner’s report only as “Dr. B” is a general surgeon who had trained in cosmetic surgery and worked at an outpatient cosmetic surgery practice.

In March 2006, the patient had abdominoplasty surgery – a procedure to get rid of the large amount of excess skin on her lower abdomen that was leftover after a previous liposuction treatment.

A couple of months after the surgery the woman developed a hematoma in her lower abdomen and ended up needing more liposuction treatments to remove the excess fluid and then further surgery to eliminate the hematoma.

In a post-surgery consultation with the surgeon in February 2007, the patient expressed dissatisfaction with the results of the tummy tuck surgery to the doctor. The doctor replied, saying that the excess skin was normal and in no way due to hematomas.

Independent advisers to the commissioner discovered that the surgeon did not provide appropriate standards of care which could be expected of a doctor who was a general surgeon who practiced cosmetic surgery exclusively. The commissioner recommended the cosmetic surgeon be referred to the Medical Council for a competency review.

According to Patterson, once the surgeon’s competency review is complete, a copy of the commissioner’s report will be sent to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and be available on the Health and Disability Commissioner website.