5. Tara Reid: Tara’s breast implants and liposuction caused a stir when first revealed as most onlookers noted the surgery actually made her breasts and stomach look worse after than before. Tara, lamenting the poorly done work said of the surgery, “I had body contouring, but it all went wrong. My stomach became the most ripply, bulgy thing.”
4. Gary Busey: The problem with Gary Busey’s veneers isn’t that they are poorly done (though they are chunkier and more box-like than they should be). Rather, the veneers seem to have taken a yellow-brown tinge. Because porcelain is translucent, the color of the veneers depends on the concrete used in making them. For his veneers to abruptly change color almost overnight some doctors think there may or may not be something wrong with his new teeth.
3. Versace: A mish-mash of odd jobs performed on Ms. Versace. The work done on her was so extensive that she is barely recognizable from her former self.
2. Pete Burns: Pete Burns is currently suing the doctor who performed his plastic surgery. The Dead or Alive frontman had his lips explode after the doctor over-injected his lips with collagen which caused granulomas (tumors).
1. Jocelyn Weldestein: Ms. Wildestein’s bizarre and excessive plastic surgery requests (she asked to be transformed into a cat to impress her husband) don’t necessarily entitle her to a medical malpractice judgement. However the multiple reconstructive surgeries she has had entitle her to some sort of compensation from the doctor who performed, and charged her for, the initial surgeries

If your plastic surgery has turned out to be a disaster, and you would like to talk to an experienced medical malpractice law firm, please contact us.

Hinchey said his bill would make sure "the military, like any other health care institution, takes steps to improve care so that no one else ever has to go through what the Rodriguezes have endured." The legislation would continue to exempt medical professionals responding to "combat scenarios," he said.

As overhead and other costs soar, doctors say they need flexibility to negotiate fees with managed health-care organizations. Physicians also want more room for discussion with HMOs on issues of patient treatment and testing.

Doctors also contend colleagues are leaving New York in droves because of sky-high medical malpractice insurance premiums. The typical neurosurgeon in the state pays $300,000 a year, said Dr. Perel. Obstetrician-gynecologists on Staten Island can pay upwards of $200,000 annually.

"It’s important for the Legislature to enact medical liability reform this year," said Assemblyman Lou Tobacco (R-South Shore), who, along with the borough’s elected officials in the Assembly and state Senate, met with the doctors. "We need to lower medical malpractice rates during these tough economic times to ensure that current doctors are able to afford practicing medicine here, while encouraging doctors who graduate from New York medical colleges to remain in the state."

Called laborists or OB hospitalists, specialists such as Kontoules are helping fill a void created by the growing number of obstetrician-gynecologists who have stopped delivering babies because of grueling on-call schedules and high malpractice insurance costs. The Boston-based ProMutual Group, the largest malpractice insurer in the state, said about 65 of the 120 obstetrician-gynecologists it insures have quit delivering babies.

For expectant mothers, who traditionally have carefully hand-picked their obstetricians to see them through pregnancy and delivery, the advent of laborists means they typically won’t meet the doctor attending the birth until they arrive at the hospital.

After just two months at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, Mullings has already mastered the art of walking on artificial legs. Now she’s being fitted for bionic hands that respond to electrical impulses, and she could be released from the hospital as soon as Feb. 3.

The hands have a sensor that will press against her stump and read the impulses generated when she flexes her forearm muscles, activating a motor that opens and closes the fingers. A cosmetic glove matched to Mullings’ skin color will fit over the prosthetic shell, making it look like the real thing.

According to the lawsuit, Dhana got care for both pregnancies at Queens Hospital Center, where doctors were aware she had gestational diabetes, a serious childbirth risk factor.

The suit also claims doctors mishandled Dhana’s care from her prenatal stage all the way through the second delivery - when doctors could have prevented the injury with a Caesarean section or other measures.

The White Plains jury returned the verdict against the medical center to Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Colabella after a three-and-a-half-week trial and a day of deliberations. It awarded $3 million to Capwell’s three daughters, ages 7, 9 and 11 at the time of her death, and $4 million to her husband, Scott Capwell.

Livingston said Theresa Capwell was admitted to the medical center on Sept. 18, 2000, with symptoms indicating pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreatic gland, but doctors spent two weeks running tests for cancer.

Despite historical claims from hospitals that such infections are unavoidable risks associated with surgery, the reality is that most hospital-contracted infections are preventable through adherence to simple hygienic practices. These practices include mandating the hospital staff to wash their hands and properly sanitizing all surgical equipment.

There has been a recent wave of medical malpractice lawsuits against hospitals for hospital-acquired infections. For instance, a jury recently awarded over $2.5 million to a patient who contracted a staph infection during heart surgery. This is just one example of many successful trials around the country.

There has been renewed pressure on hospitals to do something about the problem. For one, New York hospitals are now required to report their hospital-acquired infection rates to the New York State Department of Health. Second, Medicare now refuses to reimburse for certain hospital-acquired infections, a development that means hospitals will be forced to pay the medical costs associated with the treatment of these illnesses.

True, serious medical mistakes do happen. I heard a rumor that a New York doctor accidentally left a barbecue grill inside a patient. Another doctor transplanted a viable liver into the wrong patient’s head.

Malpractice lawsuits have forced doctors to take unusual measures. Before my wife was wheeled into the operating room at the surgical center, she was given a Magic Marker and told to mark the location of her chemo port with an X.

This seemed rather pointless given that the port was clearly poking out of her chest like a knob on a Japanese stereo. Hell, I could see it, and I failed Boy Scout first aid. On another gurney, a patient waiting to have his knee scoped was asked to write "yes" on the appropriate knee. If anyone there was having a colonoscopy, I’ll bet that was interesting.

Maybe this sort of patient participation cuts down on surgical mistakes. Maybe it just reduces doctors’ liability. I asked the medical staff. They said it was just one more way of making sure everything went according to plan. When I asked if I came back for a vasectomy would I have to draw a smiley face on each of my ovaries, they told me to have a seat in the waiting room.

Most radiologists don’t choose mammography as a subspecialty for a number of reasons — the repetitive nature of the job, narrow focus, the stress of missing a diagnosis — but two are cited most often: money loss and malpractice.

"Missed or delayed diagnosis of breast cancer remains the leading cause of medical malpractice litigation in the nation today, while at the same time reimbursement for mammographic examinations remains embarrassingly low,"  explains Dr. Leonard Berlin, chairman of the department of radiology at Rush North Shore Medical Center in Skokie, Ill., and Rush Medical College in Chicago.