NUMBER OF MUTILATED, INFECTED COSMETIC SURGERY PATIENTS SOARS

 Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Sources inside local hospitals say that the number of patients admitted as a result of infected plastic surgery who went to Matamoros clinics to have procedures performed has been growing at an alarming rate recently.

Although they are prevented from providing specific cases, they say that many of the patients are young women who come from upstate and other part of the United States attracted by advertised low prices for procedures like buttocks augmentation, breast augmentation, breast lifts, abdominoplasty, liposculpture, facelifts, rhinoplasty, and blepharoplasty that cost $10,000s more in the United States.

Patients can save up to 40 to 60 percent over the cost of similar procedures in the U.S.

"We have a young woman from up north now that showed up with infections from a tummy tuck through a clinic that operates in Matamoros," said a medical professional who works at a local hospital. "She is a pretty young woman as she is. Why they decide to expose themselves to these dangers is beyond me."

Clinics offer monthly discounts on their websites at less than half the cost offered by U.S. plastic surgeon rates to attract customers from Texas and northern states.

"There was a clinic closed sometime back because of the number of infections, but there are plenty of others and we're getting some of their patients coming in with infections problems. she said. "People need to know they are running a danger exposing themselves to this."

Despite the Center for Disease Control advising Americans to “cancel any elective procedure that involves an epidural injection of an anesthetic in Matamoros,” some 1.2 million Americans still flock from the United States to clinics there and elsewhere in Mexico each year.

Business is so booming that there’s a transportation service to take patients from Brownsville to Matamoros via the BBL (Brazilian Butt Lift) Wagon: a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van illustrated on its side with a needle injecting a 6-foot-high cartoon butt.

But according to newspaper reports, some 200 US residents who recently underwent surgery in Mexico risked exposure to fungal meningitis, a potentially fatal infection.

So far, around two dozen have contracted it after receiving apparently tainted epidural anesthesia for elective cosmetic surgery; according to the CDC, four people died soon after as a result.