As we all know, the market size and technical level of The Korean medical aesthetic industry are among the top in the world. However, in the Korean medical aesthetic community, there is a so-called "ghost surgery", which means that during the plastic surgery, the main surgeon who should be responsible is replaced by another doctor. In recent years, driven by interests, the "ghost surgery" in the Korean medical and aesthetic circles has been repeatedly prohibited, and patients who have unfortunately encountered them have been disfigured and killed.
The "ghost" on the operating table Chief Surgeon Who are you!
On Tuesday, a case in South Korea that resulted in the death of a patient due to "ghost surgery" will be tried for the sixth time in five years, what is expected to be the verdict?
According to Ms. Lee, the plaintiff in the case, her son Kwon Dae-hee underwent mandibular angle plastic surgery at a well-known plastic surgery hospital in South Korea in 2016, and Kwon Dae-hee's 26-year-old young life abruptly ended in this uncomplicated operation. After the tragedy, Ms. Li was shocked to find that her son's operation was not carried out by the hospital director who promised before the operation, but was replaced by a novice doctor who had just graduated and had no plastic surgery qualifications, the so-called "ghost doctor".
During the operation, Kwon Daxi lost 3500 milliliters of blood, equivalent to the total blood volume of a woman weighing 45 kilograms, and the medical staff dragged the bloody floor 13 times without performing a blood transfusion for him. At one point, the doctors even left the operating room, leaving Kwon Dae-hee with an assistant nurse sitting on her makeup and playing with her phone. Eventually, the college student, who was about to graduate from a prestigious university, died of shock due to excessive blood loss.
Victim Kwon Dae-hee's mother, Lee Na-kim: I analyzed the surveillance video and found that unimaginable things happened in the operating room. They left my baby there in order to operate on two other patients at the same time. In south Korea, even if a doctor dies in this way, it will be treated as a medical malpractice, and the punishment is very small.
After the accident, Ms. Li moved her family to Seoul and embarked on a difficult road to defend her rights for 5 years. She could not accept the verdict of "medical negligence". The plastic surgery hospital involved is still operating, and even advertised "14 years without accidents". In the upcoming trial, the doctors concerned will face criminal charges of manslaughter. If the lawsuit is won, it will become the first case in the history of Korean medical treatment to punish "ghost surgery" for homicide, so it has aroused great concern in Korean society.
Victim Kwon Dae-hee's mother Lee Na-kim: Although I did not protect my children well, there are many other young children who have lost their lives due to "ghost surgery" now. They don't have access to the monitoring of the operating room, there is no way to obtain evidence, and even if the child is gone, the family members have no way of knowing the real cause of the child's death.
In fact, the "Kwon Dae-hee case" is by no means unique in South Korea. Industry insiders revealed that from 2000 to 2019, in the 20 years, a total of about 500 patients died due to plastic surgery, 40 to 60% died of "ghost surgery". Huge profits breed this pattern of surgery like a factory assembly line. The hospital packaged and vigorously promoted the "star doctors" to attract customers who loved beauty, and then most of the surgical procedures were performed by inexperienced new doctors. In addition to novices, the so-called "ghost doctors" also include dentists, nurses, etc., and consumers are completely blinded and ignorant.
Kim Sun-woong: The Ghost Catcher threatens to seek justice for the victim
After media exposure, Kwon Dae-hee's death by "ghost surgery" caused a huge response in South Korea. So, why is this kind of "ghost surgery" so difficult to eradicate?
Kim Sun-woong, a plastic surgeon in South Korea, has been tracking and studying "ghost surgery", and has also created a non-governmental organization against "ghost surgery", which was the first to speak out to the public to expose the inside story of the industry, but he has also suffered retaliation for this, and has twice been sued by plastic surgery hospitals for defamation. In the process of helping victims of "ghost surgery" to seek justice, he found that most people gave up litigation because of the difficulty of obtaining evidence; at the same time, even if the case entered the court trial stage, it was difficult to impose a heavy sentence, often with fines and revocation of doctor's licenses. According to statistics, the complete success rate of these medical malpractices is less than 2%.
Kim Sun-woong, a South Korean plastic surgeon: Now there is no reasonable punishment for various forms of "ghost surgery" in South Korea, and people should know the truth. I have been communicating the truth to society since 2014. It's a shame to say, but South Korea has become a country that commercializes "ghost surgery."
Kim Sun-woong said that to eliminate "ghost surgery", legislation should be passed, requiring that monitoring must be installed in hospital operating rooms, and stipulating that hospitals have the obligation to disclose surveillance videos to patients, which is undoubtedly the most direct way. Currently, only 13% of hospitals in South Korea with general anesthesia operating rooms have monitoring installed in the operating room. But even with surveillance, based on South Korea's current personal information protection law, public videos require the consent of all healthcare workers and patients who are filmed. Then, when a patient requests a video record, once the hospital refuses, the monitoring is useless.
Citizen of Seoul, South Korea: When you do surgery, after all, you will expose your body, and it is likely to leak your personal privacy.
Citizens of Seoul, South Korea: If there is monitoring, if there is any problem during the operation, family and friends can confirm it. Or if you can get friends into the operating room together to watch, it is also a good idea.
Recently, South Korean agencies conducted a survey on whether monitoring equipment should be set up in the operating room, and 90% of the respondents expressed their approval, while the medical community expressed strong opposition. Nine doctors' organizations, including the Korean Doctors' Association, said doing so amounted to treating doctors as potential criminals and violating the human rights of medical teams. In recent years, bills stipulating that the whole course of surgery should be real-named and how to determine various obligations in the operating room have been repeatedly proposed, and they have been named the "Quan Daxi Law". However, how to completely drive away the "ghosts" in the operating room and avoid the tragedy of the "Kwon Dae-hee style" needs to be deeply explored by the whole Korean society. (CCTV Finance)
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