A Florida woman is clinging to life just days after undergoing a face lift at the hands of a controversial plastic surgeon.
Dr. Alton Ingram, 38, has a questionable track record.
Another Florida woman says he punctured her intestine during liposuction. And a Staten Island woman says the surgeon disfigured her.
On July 29, Olga Myers, a 42-year-old mother of two, went to the Cosmetic Surgery Center in Hollywood, Fla., to have Ingram perform a face lift and an eye job. Hours later, she was in a coma.
Jeff Ostrow, the Myers family lawyer, said he believes she suffered severe brain damage during the operation because she didn’t receive enough oxygen.
Myers is on a respirator at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, unable to breathe on her own.
Her family is waiting for her parents to arrive from Ukraine before deciding whether to pull the plug. That could happen as early as today, Ostrow said.
“This is a terrible tragedy,” the lawyer said. “The family is looking for answers.”
Ostrow said the family plans to file a malpractice suit.
A spokesman for the Florida Department of Health said Ingram, who earned his medical degree in 1990, has no disciplinary actions against him.
But Dorothy Korth, 55, of Naples, Fla., said Ingram punctured her intestines and nicked her pancreas during liposuction in May 2001.
“I was bleeding and in pain. He kept telling me it was normal, not to worry,” she told The Post.
After four days of agony, Korth checked into a hospital for corrective surgery.
She tried to file a malpractice suit, but before she could do it, Ingram, who has no malpractice insurance, filed for bankruptcy.
Anita Marke, a Staten Island homemaker who owns a home in Boca Raton, told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel she went to Ingram two years ago to improve her appearance but came away disfigured. Ingram botched the procedure so badly, she said, she had to undergo two skin grafts.
Reached in Staten Island yesterday, Marke was reluctant to talk because, “It’s too embarrassing.”
Neither Ingram nor his lawyer, Robert Reiser, returned calls for comment.