Charlie Smith
A MAN has died of a heart attack while undergoing a hair transplant.
Rafael Bolado Marino, 39, went under the knife at a Spanish surgery, but died shortly after being administered an anaesthetic, which is issued ‘5,000 times a day’.
The Spaniard was rushed from the Dermitek clinic in Bilbao to the Basurto Hospital and then to the Valdecilla hospital in his native Cantabria.
But doctors could not save him, and the hair transplant surgeon said it is ‘not known if the heart attack was caused by the anaesthetic or not’.
The clinic, which has been giving men their hairlines back for over five years, said it was ‘affected’ by the tragedy.
It added that it had given Rafael’s family all ‘the support they have been able to’.
It is unknown if a criminal investigation is underway, but there have been calls for a probe, including from Maria del Carmen Adan.
“They sell this service as innocuous, but perhaps it is misleading advertising, without explaining the serious adverse effects that can happen,” the representative of the Association of the Patient Advocate said.
She added that a crime could have occurred, ‘due to an alleged negligence in the amount of anesthesia, or due to a lack of control in the preoperative period’.
Rafael’s funeral has now been held and dozens of people have paid their respects to him online as well.
The Dermitek clinic counts Ismael Urzaiz, the former Athletic Bilbao forward, among its thousands of patients.
