Wednesday, February 11, 2009

This Week in the News: Tameka Raymond


W
hy would the new bride of R&B singer Usher Raymond (30) go to Brazil to get liposuction? Tameka Raymond né Foster (37) is reported to have suffered suffered cardiac and respiratory arrest last Saturday while being anesthetized for the cosmetic surgery. In plain English, she died and then was revived.

ASA risk grades (physical status scale to predict risk) are used to decide if a patient should have an operation. It will be interesting to know if this could have been predicted à la Kanye West's mother, Donda West.

Cardiac arrests related to anesthesia have an incidence of roughly 1.1/10,000 in the US, Australia, and France. Half of those patients die. The causes are usually anesthetic overdose, hypovolemia (drop in blood volume), or hypoxemia (dop in blood oxygenation ) due to faulty airway mangement. Human error is almost always involved and avoidable.

Some assume Raymond went to Brazil to keep a post-baby tummy tuck and liposuction "mom job" secret/private. The Essence magazine outtake at right is after Usher baby #1 (November 2007) and before baby #2 (December 2008). [Picture removed.]

A neurosurgeon from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dr. Gabriel Hunt, was flown in to monitor her treatment at Sírio-Libanês Hospital in Sao Paulo– not a good sign. If reports of a drug-induced coma are accurate, it's usually to treat intracranial hypertension. One possibility is generalized brain swelling that can occur in ischemic-anoxia states.

Of course the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) has campaigned against medical tourism, though not very convincingly.


Hear Anne flesh it all out with Kevyn Burger on-air. Use this link to find the FM107.1 audio archive of Knifestyles broadcast on 02.11.09. Step one: select the date shown on the blog posting; step two: click on Kevyn Burger; step three: click on first hour.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Anne- Tameka's last name is Raymond, not Usher.

Laurel Ferris, MA said...

Can you tell how late I was up last night? Thanks for being my editor!