Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Randal Haworth is accused of “playing hard-core pornography and videos showing extreme and graphic violence, such as actual beheadings, on a monitor” while performing procedures, “unlawfully using Percocet” before operating, and not disclosing that he had undergone eye surgery that may have impaired his depth perception. The allegations, based on statements made in a deposition by Dr. Haworth’s former surgical assistant in a separate case, were leveled by an attorney representing a patient claiming injuries from botched lip filler injections.
Dr. Haworth’s website says he is an AOA graduate of the USC School of Medicine who trained at Cornell, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and UCLA. He has appeared on various television shows. When contacted by thewrap.com he said the allegations were “preposterous” and added, “The [sic] might as well say that I killed JonBenét Ramsey.”
Whether the charges are true or not should be easy to determine since many other people would have been present in the OR during the 15 years Haworth’s surgical assistant worked with him.
The Georgia Composite Medical Board suspended the license of board-certified dermatologist Dr. Windell Davis-Boutte. She is named in several malpractice suits, three of which have been settled for at least $900,000 each. CNN reported that one patient, a 54-year-old woman, suffered a cardiac arrest and permanent brain damage during a liposuction procedure.
Dr. Davis-Boutte achieved notoriety when a lawyer representing several plaintiffs went public with news that the doctor had posted some 20 YouTube videos depicting her dancing and singing in the operating room. A patient who suffered what she says are disfiguring complications was able to identify herself in a video showing the doctor dancing and waving a scalpel to the beat of the music. The videos were removed from YouTube. But many people had already downloaded them, and several have been reposted. If you are interested, Atlanta TV station WSB-TV has more details.
A few days ago, the doctor, a graduate of UCLA medical school and Emory’s dermatology residency program, was interviewed on CNN’s HLN network. She said all the patients in the videos had signed consents, and some of them had even chosen the accompanying music. A lawyer for several of the plaintiffs said they had not agreed to have the videos used in the way the doctor used them.
In the interview, Dr. Davis-Boutte said she had done nothing wrong, but added, “Had I had the forethought and the foresight that an entity could take those innocent, consented, educational and celebratory videos, misconstrue them, edit and fabricate the context, and use it for negative agendas, I would not have done it.”
Was this professional misconduct or merely overly exuberant use of social media?
Skeptical Scalpel is a retired surgeon and was a surgical department chairman and residency program director for many years. He is board-certified in general surgery and a surgical sub-specialty and has re-certified in both several times. For the last 8 years, he has been blogging at SkepticalScalpel.blogspot.com and tweeting as @SkepticScalpel. His blog has had more than 3,000,000 page views, and he has over 18,000 followers on Twitter.
SkepticalScalpel