Avoiding a plastic surgery tragedy: What Miss Argentina needed to know

My heart just breaks when I hear stories like the one of the beautiful former Miss Argentina. You probably already heard about her death. It was initially reported that she died after having plastic surgery to enhance her buttocks. (Here's the original story.)

Well, more details have emerged, and it appears that Miss Argentina wasn't actually having "plastic surgery". In fact, an Argentinian plastic surgeon refused to do the procedure she requested! So she went to someone who isn't a plastic surgeon at all and was willing to inject her buttocks with liquid silicone--something not approved in Argentina or here in the States. She died, reportedly, from a pulmonary embolus (a clot in the lungs).

There is an educational opportunity in this tragedy. In fact, this article from CNN.com does a great job of breaking down some of the questions you should ask before undergoing any cosmetic procedure. Of the questions that CNN suggested, these are the ones I think are MOST critical:

"Doctor, are you board certified?

You want a doctor who's certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. "

Doctor, do you have privileges at a hospital to perform this procedure?

Even though you likely won't be in the hospital, you want to know if a hospital has deemed your doctor skilled enough to perform the procedure in their facility.

"The hospital is the judge of the physician's abilities," Haeck said. "If a surgeon says he doesn't have privileges at a local hospital to do the procedure, that should be a red flag."

If the surgeon says he does have privileges, call the hospital and double-check."