Overview
- Patricia Sucacahua, 32, suffered complications during a cosmetic procedure performed in a rented operating room at the Municipal Geriatric Hospital in Cerro Colorado.
- The operation was conducted under the hospital’s “open clinic” model by external physician Dennis Steve Vargas Torres, who does not belong to the staff and has not been located.
- An emergency arose mid-surgery, and a SAMU ambulance transferred the patient to Clínica Arequipa, where she arrived without vital signs.
- Her body was taken to the central morgue of Arequipa for a necropsy that will establish the cause of death.
- Hospital director Gustavo Rondón says aesthetic procedures are not routine there and that protocols and authorizations were in order, while police and prosecutors investigate and some reports question whether the facility is permitted to conduct aesthetic surgeries.