Eighty-five-year-old plastic surgeon Dr. Lawrence Hansen has agreed to accept 35 months of probation to settle accusations of negligence in a vaginal reconstruction that left a 39-year-old woman dead.
The California Medical Board says Hansen failed to check on Marcia Garcia's medical history or perform an exam before the March 2008 surgery at Hills Surgical Institute in Anaheim Hills.
A then-83-year-old forgot? Imagine that.
]
The medical board does not permanently take away his license to practice? Typical.
The Associated Press has the scoop.
Garcia
bled during the procedure, and then underwent liposuction by a different
doctor. The mother of five later suffered a heart attack and died. The coroner blamed an accidental puncture wound.
Hansen first popped up on the Weekly's radar in a report about another plastic surgeon at the then-unaccredited outpatient center surrendering his license.
Dr. Mark A. Knight took over the Anaheim Hills practice from another doctor who had surrendered his license.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.