Surgery on Family

[zippa]

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I was watching Dr. 90210 today and had to ask about something I saw. One of the surgeons decided to perform surgery on his brother and his girlfriend (Cool Lipo and traditional lipo, if you care). His brother ended up having an allergic reaction to one of the meds before the surgery even started, but the anesthesiologist was able to fix that and they continued to perform the surgery. My question is would you perform surgery on a family member? For me it just seem like an ethical issue similar to prescribe meds to you family members, but wasnt sure if it applies in plastics.

 

[deleted144060]

I'll start with the relatively unknown fact that the 90210 guy (the main guy), operated on his brother who ended up with anoxic brain injury from blood loss. There's bad thing number one.

Number two: I operated on my brother. He was in serious need of a rhinoplasty for both cosmetic and functional reasons. The surgery went fine, but I was getting phone calls every day about swelling, breathing, bruising, steri-strips, and other stuff that was even less significant. It really was starting to get distracting. I was getting daily questions via texting as well along with pictures taken by his cell phone camera (he was out of town). Don't get me wrong. My brother is a good guy and I love him, but because he's family, I think he thought he had/has some special dispensation clause in his consent to call me whenever he wanted. This literally went on for almost two months. It gradually tapered down to weekly.

I decided never to do this again. It wasn't an ethical thing, it was that I found I couldn't maintain a professional doctor/patient relationship with a family member. I know it may not sound like that big of a deal, but it was/is, and I won't get in that position again, unless somebody is going to die unless I intervene immediately.

--M

 

[TheThroat]

Not a good ethical move, besides the very practical points made above.

 

[MossPoh]

From what I've seen, it is generally wiser to direct the family member to a person you trust. We had a physician who performed a procedure on a family member...family member took a turn for the worse. Aside from the obvious issues with having a patient not doing well, you tend to be emotionally connected to family members. You don't think clearly, you make stupid decisions and have tremendous guilt if things don't go right. It is better to just leave it in command of someone you trust. Let others do their job, so you can do yours.

 

[beastmaster]

The vascular attending during my surgery rotation made an effort to explain why he wouldn't operate on his wife's varicose veins. The main bulletpoint was: if you want to stay married, don't do it. Aside from complications, he said, if there's the slightest mismatch between expectation and outcome... So he took her to another vascular surgeon.

 

[meliora27]

The "cool laser" guy, Dr. Matlock, according to his website, is Board Certified in OB/GYN, he's not even a plastic surgeon. OB/GYN's performing this type of cosmetic surgery isn't common, is it?

 

[daizy]

i think all what was mentioned is true no way to operate on relative or even a close friend, 👎