Two plastic surgeons have been banned from the medical profession over the death of a billiionaire businessman during a penis enlargement operation.
Belgian-Israeli tycoon Ehud Arye Laniado, founder of the Antwerp-based Omega Diamonds, suffered a fatal cardiac arrest while undergoing injections intended to enlarge his penis in March 2019.
The 65-year-old had been receiving treatment at the private Saint-Honore-Ponthieu aesthetic clinic in central Paris, where he reportedly underwent the procedure several times a year at a cost of tens of thousands of euros at a time.
A French court heard this week how emergency services were first called to the clinic at Laniado’s insistence around 8pm on March 2, 2019, while he was still alive.
Despite the apparent abdominal pain he was suffering, he insisted on continuing the procedure. Two hours later, at 10pm, emergency services were called again after the fatal heart attack.
The two surgeons who carried out the procedure were handed heavy fines and permanently barred from practising medicine.
The lead surgeon, identified only as “Guy H”, was investigated on the allegations that he failed to assist a person in danger, practised medicine without a license and drug-related offences.
Early in the investigation, authorities ruled out the possibility that the injections themselves were the cause of death.
According to Le Parisien, the investigation centred on why the medical staff failed to respond appropriately following the first emergency call.
The French court ultimately ruled that it was not the injection into the penis that caused the death, but the “serious medical errors committed by the doctors during treatment”.
The investigation reportedly uncovered extensive irregularities at the clinic, with Guy H, originally from Algeria, operating without being registered with the French medical association despite having worked in the country for more than two decades.
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