An autopsy on Limerick woman Kay Cregan (42), who died after plastic surgery in New York, has proved inconclusive, but a New York state investigation is continuing, the New York Times reported yesterday, writes Conor O'Clery in New York.
The surgeon involved, Dr Michael Sachs, said he was confident the state investigation would show he had done no wrong. "I'm a good surgeon and a caring doctor," said Dr Sachs, who is continuing to perform surgery at his Manhattan clinic.
However, the president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons told the New York Times that Dr Sachs "is not a surgeon of high professional standing".
Commenting about Dr Sachs's website, which Ms Cregan consulted before flying to New York on March 14th for her operation, Dr Scott Spear said it was "full of puffery, self-aggrandisement and not professional".
The website claims that Dr Sachs is director of the Sachs Institute for Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, but he is the only surgeon, and the "institute" is merely his clinic, according to yesterday's full-page New York Times investigation of the Cregan case by reporter Warren St John. The website describes him as founder and president of the American Society of Revisional Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, which he once tried to start but which does not exist.
Dr Sachs, who has been sued for malpractice 33 times, once boasted on the Oprah Winfrey Show that he often had to repair the botched work of lesser surgeons. He quit the academy of plastic surgeons to which he belonged when summoned to an ethics committee to explain his remarks.
Dr Sachs was listed in 2000 by the New York Daily News as one of "the most sued doctors in New York". After a state investigation last year into a case where he performed 16 surgeries on the same patient, he was banned from doing some nose procedures without supervision by another surgeon.
None of this background was known to Ms Cregan when she contacted Dr Sachs after reading an article about his successful surgery on an Irish woman in the Sunday Independent.
By e-mail he told her the fee for facial surgery would be €25,000 but he could do it for €15,000 if she paid him in advance when he was visiting Ireland in February for a charity event. She paid Dr Sachs when he came as a guest to the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation Ball at Kilkea Castle, Castledermot, Co Kildare.
Dr Sachs said the death of Ms Cregan was a tragedy. "We did everything we could to treat her with as much care, respect and love as we could."