A former Miss Argentina and international model has died three days after booking herself in for a buttock lift at a Buenos Aires, in a tragedy that has thrown the growing national obsession with the body beautiful into the spotlight.
Solange Magnano, a 38-year-old married mother of twins who still enjoyed a successful modelling career, died of a pulmonary embolism.
“A woman who had everything lost her life to have a slightly firmer behind,” said fashion designer and close friend, Roberto Piazza, in whose runway shows Ms Magnano frequently appeared.
Ms Magnano, who was Miss Argentina in 1994, had gone with a friend to a clinic run by Monica Portnoy, which, according to reports in the Argentinian press, performs an average of 15 such procedures daily. But after complications developed during the operation, which involves injections of the substance Polimetilmetacrilate, she was rushed to hospital with acute respiratory deficiency.
Her condition deteriorated until she suffered the embolism on Sunday, said Dr Gonzales Cortes, who attended her case.
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“She only underwent the procedure because she thought it was no big deal,” said Guillermo Azar, another associate from the fashion world and a close friend of the model.
Mr Piazza said Ms Magnano had not needed the operation and suggested she had fallen victim to an increasingly beauty-obsessed society.
Some 50,000 cosmetic surgeries were performed in Argentina last year, a 60 per cent rise since 2003 as women increasingly turn to the scalpel or the growing number of supposedly non-invasive procedures on the market in pursuit of the perfect form.
“Narcissism is in its heyday,” said Mr Piazza. “She was perfect, she didn’t need any surgery,” he continued. “She took care of herself a lot, went to the gym, had everything in its place, perfect measurements, a divine little waist. Last year she had surgery on her breasts and they came out perfect, but she did not need this butt surgery. It was stupid what she did, I don’t understand it.”
Ms Magnano had made the mistake of trusting cosmetic surgery advertisements which promised incredible results with no pain or risk, the designer suggested. “They promise to lift the buttocks and disappear cellulite with an injection, promising women they are going to look stupendous,” he complained, demanding an investigation into the clinic concerned. “This operation on the backside is very delicate.”
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Speaking through a spokesperson for the family, Ms Magnano’s husband Gustavo Rosso, dismissed suggestions of medical negligence. “What happened to Sol was a tragedy,” said Luis Nasser, adding there had only been 15 recorded fatalities from the procedure worldwide “We don’t want to talk of malpractice.”
But Argentine experts suggested the operation may not have been performed correctly. Juan Carlos Seiler, the former president of an Argentine plastic surgeons association, queried whether the doctor who performed the procedure was “a real professional from an approved” cosmetic surgery centre, while surgeons explained that such complications, though rare, were possible if mistakes were made.
According to the Argentine Society of Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery (SACPER), doctors in the country rarely use injections of polimetilmetacrilate in glutoplasties, instead preferring implants or transfers of the patient’s own fat.
Polimetilmetacrilate, cheaper than the other techniques and injected into the muscle through a surgical incision, has been used for just two years.
“It can happen that the product enters a capillary,” Dr Carlos Reilly, vice president of SACPER, told the Argentine newspaper Clarin. “It is a procedure which has risks and must be inserted into very specific places.”
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In October, Mexican singer Alejandra Guzman suffered a life-threatening infection after the procedure, and is currently suing the doctors responsible for physical and emotional damage.
Ms Magnano’s funeral, in her home city of San Francisco where she opened a modelling school in 2007, was attended by over 300 mourners and broadcast on national television.
Argentina has emerged as one of the world’s top cosmetic surgery destinations in recent years, with a growing number of foreigners travelling to the Latin American country in search of inexpensive cosmetic enhancements.