MANILA, Philippines—The Quezon City prosecutors office has junked the bid of a businesswoman seeking the reversal of a review resolution dismissing her medical malpractice suit against cosmetic surgeon Vicky Belo and two other doctors.
City prosecutor Donald Lee denied the partial motion for reconsideration of the complainant, Josefina Norcio, for lack of merit.
In the three-page resolution, also exonerated from the estafa and violation of the Medical Act of 1959 charges were doctors Francis Decanghon and Ronaldo Cayetano, both with the Belo Medical Group.
Lee said Norcio did not present new evidence which would mean the modification of the review resolution and that the issues in her appeal are a rehash of arguments she already raised in the preliminary investigation of the case.
Norcio, who underwent a butt augmentation surgery in 2002 and 2005, appealed the Aug. 9, 2012 review resolution which dismissed the cases she lodged against the doctors due to probable cause.
The complainant claimed that Belo et al performed the surgeries, knowing fully well that they were not authorized, qualified and licensed to do so, and at the time of the operation, Belo et al were not members of Philippine College of Surgeons, Philippine Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons, nor certified by the Philippine Board of Plastic Surgery.
The doctors pointed out that Belo did not take part in the surgery. They added that all patients are advised of all risks involved in the buttocks augmentation procedure, and that Norcio gave her consent to go on with the surgery.
In his resolution, Lee said: “In sum, the totality of the evidence presented is more in keeping with the distinct possibility that the infections suffered by the complainant on her buttocks were an efficient intervening cause later or between the time she underwent such butt augmentation procedures to the time her infections started to manifest.”
The city prosecutor cited the affidavit of one Dr. Henry Costa, an infectious diseases specialist, who said the infection that Norcio suffered may not be a post-operative complication of the hydrogel butt injections performed on her.
Costa said the enterobacter, pseudomons and klebsiella bacteria present in her wound would usually manifest in five to seven days, making her critically ill much earlier. Norcio lodged the complaints in 2009 or four years after her last operation.
