A rhinoplasty patient Vishal Thakkar woke up in a Tulsa hospital after a routine nose-job operation, only to find out that his entire nose had been taken off by plastic surgeon Angelo Cuzalina.
Written by Chris White
The hapless victim of the bungled plastic surgery operation said that the facial disaster occurred as a consequence of 8 previous plastic surgery treatments, all of which were originally designed to repair accidental damage sustained by the former.
Thakkar said that the chain of reparational surgeries started when the first rhinoplasty operation left him with breathing difficulties after sleeping or working out.
Mr. Thakkar alleges that surgeons had promised to not only repair the damage initially sustained, but also had made an undertaking not to use cartilage from his ear in order to rebuild his nose, which Thakkar alleges the surgeons then violated on more than one occasion.
Thakkar said that this incident was then repeated when surgeons took cartilage from his rib cage instead, despite being specifically asked not to however, the final horror came in 2011 when undergoing another nasal operation to clear out an infection caused by previous operations, his entire nose was completely lost leaving him disfigured.
Mr. Thakkar’s lawsuit against Dr. Cuzalina (who is the president of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery), specifically mentions the allegation that Cuzalina covertly recorded conversations between himself and Thakkar in medical offices, which he then allegedly used as a justification to refuse to operate on Thakkar any further in a letter he sent on August 31st 2012, citing what he called Thakkar’s “ongoing threats and harassment against my staff, my practice and me personally”.
Thakkar’s lawsuit went on to attack Cuzalina’s practice as having “prescribed an excessive amount of medication, enough to kill the patient, if taken, including but not limited to Loratab, Ambien, Valilum and Oxycodone”.
In a recent Fox interview Mr. Thakkar said that his plastic surgery adventures were far from over and that he had now embarked on a quest to restore his face back to normalcy.
“There is no way I am going to live like this. It is worse than being dead.” Thakkar said.
Daily Business Feature: Growth in the 21st century will be made through technology and innovation. Payment processors are using new service solutions to solve old problems.
