The La Paz Hospital in Madrid has reported the death of Silvia Idalia Serrano, the 34-year-old Palma woman who had been in an induced coma since early May after undergoing aesthetic surgery at the CEME clinic in Madrid.
On April 29, she had surgery at the clinic and was discharged. But she suffered an infection and was admitted to La Paz some days later.
The lawyer representing Silvia's family, Mar de la Loma, has expressed her sorrow at the announcement and has passed her condolences to Silvia's boyfriend Daniel and to her relatives. She argues that a rigorous investigation of practices at the clinic needs to be carried out, not so much to do with what happened in the operating theatre but with post-operative procedures.
The clinic has also lamented Silvia's death. Its owner and the clinic itself are under investigation by a Madrid court, the clinic maintaining that she suffered an infectious complication, necrotising fasciitis, that is "exceptional" after plastic surgery procedures, and whose bacteria "are not hospital-acquired or transmitted from personnel or the health environment, but rather from the microbiota of the patient". (Microbiata are bacteria that exist on or inside the body and possess a unique ecological relationship with the host.)
Necrotizing fasciitis (also known as flesh-eating disease) "can be difficult to establish in the first hours or days of its presentation". After the operation, says the clinic, Silvia was treated by CEME personnel in a hospital, "exploring the wounds, taking constant and analytical samples". She was transferred to the intensive care unit at La Paz when "general signs" were detected; this was a week after the operation.