Earlier this month the Florida Board of Medicine made an unprecedented ruling that limits the number of Brazilian Butt Lift procedures a surgeon can perform to three per day and requires the use of ultrasound guidance while performing these surgeries. The ruling comes after a series of BBL-related deaths occurred in Miami and many surgeons in the state consider it to be a knee-jerk reaction that will not improve patient safety as the majority of surgeons in the state perform the procedure safely. This week, a newly formed organization called Surgeons for Safety filed an appeal to block the new restrictions.
The ruling was made to help prevent fatalities that are caused when the fat injected to reshape the butt enters the bloodstream, leading to a fat embolism, which can occur very quickly during the surgery. Over the years, the procedure has come under fire for the growing number of patient deaths, mainly occurring in South Florida. According to the Miami-Dade surgeons leading the Surgeons for Safety group, some of the numbers have been incorrectly attributed to BBLs and many of the fatalities happen at clinics that do not use best practices and are sometimes referred to as “surgical mills.”