World-rated plastic surgeon Pitanguy dies at 90
RIO DE JANEIRO: Ivo Pitanguy, a plastic surgeon whose skill with the scalpel drew celebrities to his operating table from around the world and made him a cultural icon in beauty-obsessed Brazil, died on Saturday, one day after passing the Olympic torch for the Rio Games. He was 90.
Pitanguy died of a heart attack in his home. He had been suffering from a kidney illness since last year.
In his last public appearance, seated in a wheelchair, Pitanguy held the Olympic torch in the Rio neighbourhood of Gavea where his clinic is, on the final leg of the relay to Friday’s opening of the games.
The son of a doctor, Pitanguy reportedly fainted the first time he saw surgery as a boy. However, he went on to become a revered dispenser of beauty at his Rio clinic and to cement Brazil’s place as one of the world’s plastic surgery capitals.
He ended his days rich, with an island a few minutes’ helicopter flight south of Rio, where the nature lover set up his own ecological sanctuary.
But Pitanguy, inventor of procedures such as the “Brazilian butt-lift”, first shot to prominence and hero status by providing his skills free to victims of a disaster.
After a circus tent burnt hundreds of spectators in 1961 in one of the world’s worst fires, Pitanguy rushed to save lives and later repaired the disfigurements of the victims.
From then on, Pitanguy always saw plastic surgery as more than skin-deep and fought the prejudice against it in the medical world.
“This tragedy proved the importance of our specialty,” he said on his website. “It is the attempt to reach harmony between body and spirit, emotional and rational.”
After training in Paris and London, he became a pioneer of plastic surgery in Brazil but still offered his staff and services free to less-well-off patients one day a week.
“Ivo Pitanguy dedicated his life to helping people live better,” Brazil’s interim President, Michel Temer, said. “He will be missed.”
His friend Salvador Dali painted him and in 1999 he received one of the highest honours in the Carnival City when a samba school used him as its theme: “The Universe of Beauty – Master Pitanguy”. – Reuters