Brazilian plastic surgeon accused of murdering patient with chemical filler
A Brazilian plastic surgeon has been charged with murder after one of his patients died following an operation in his Rio de Janeiro apartment.
Dr Denis Furtado, 45, also known as “Dr Bumbum” for his work on buttocks, performed an operation on manager Lilian Calixto, 46, with help from his mother and girlfriend.
But he was not authorised to carry out the procedure in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
He is charged with using too much of a chemical, resulting in Calixto’s death.
She became ill after the operation and he took her to a hospital where she died from an abnormally high heart rate.
Dr Furtado became a celebrity plastic surgeon after posting pictures of his surgical work on the photo-sharing app Instagram, attracting a following of 650,000.
“I have never had a complication [with a patient],” he said at a police station press conference, pleading his innocence. He said he had performed thousands of operations without problems.
Dr Furtado is accused of using 300 millilitres of an acrylic plastic that should be used only in small doses. The public prosecutor’s office in Rio de Janeiro said Dr Furtado had lured in women “with the false promise of quick and immediate beauty”.
In a July Facebook post, he wrote that the procedure was “minimally invasive” and offered “immediate and definitive results, using local anaesthesia and therefore painless”.
He said there was not “much need of rest [for patients] after
Dr Denis Furtado went missing after his patient’s death but was arrested after a four-day manhunt
the procedure”.
Dr Furtado went missing after Calixto’s death but police arrested him in June after a four-day manhunt.
The Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery has criticised Dr Furtado for his actions. It said Brazil has a wider cosmetic surgery problem.
Dr Furtado’s mother also faces charges after helping him to practise in the state without a licence and after her own medical licence had been revoked.