A Rockland County widower won a $2.3 million settlement against a “Dr. Oz”-endorsed Manhattan plastic surgeon after his young wife and the mother of his two children died following a liposuction procedure.
Even though Stanford University-trained Dr. Sharon Giese worked with the Food and Drug Administration’s liposuction safety squad, her 32-year-old patient Adriana Porras perished two days after receiving the procedure to her thighs and knees on June 25, 2009.
Porra, who had a history of obesity, died of a blood clot in her lung, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court.
Her husband, Nanuet resident Pablos Balzola, sued in October 2009, accusing the top doc of negligence, claiming she didn’t return calls to an emergency hotline when his wife started suffering from chest pain and shortness of breath post-surgery.
Balzola’s medical expert, pathologist Mark Taff, said that if Porras had been treated for the symptoms, her “chance of survival would have been substantially increased,” according to court papers.
Giese’s experts countered that the clot traveled to her lung only 20 to 30 seconds before she died, so “there was no time to treat it.”
The devastated husband also argued that Giese ignored her own protocols by performing the procedure in her East 61st Street townhouse office rather than a hospital.
The settlement was reached in late April and made public in Manhattan Supreme Court filings on Monday.
About $750,000 of the payout will be set aside in trust for Porras’ 6-year-old daughter, Maia, and 9-year-old son, Nicholas.
The family’s attorney, Elise Hagouel Langsam, will receive $365,000 in legal fees. The remainder will go to Balzola.
The doctor recently appeared on “Dr. Oz” to perform a “miracle shot” to fix sagging jowls on a patient.
She has also been a guest on the “Today” show and “The Early Show,” and teaches at SUNY in Brooklyn.
Guise declined to comment, referring calls to her attorney, who was not in the office.