Magnolia Morales underwent 30 surgeries between July and December 2022. The 29-year-old girl had perforations and lacerations in the organs of the digestive system caused by complications from weight-loss surgery, according to her sister Esmeralda EL PAÍS. Doctors could do nothing to save his life and on January 6 he went into cardiac arrest. The family has filed a complaint of manslaughter and malpractice against Hernán Lizárraga, the doctor who performed the first gastric sleeve operation and who was responsible for his treatment for the next two months. Lizárraga has refused to answer questions from this newspaper. The Sinaloa State Health Risk Protection Commission has confirmed that the center where the procedure was performed was sanctioned last year. The case of the Mexican influencer has highlighted the risks of aesthetic surgeries in a country that performs more than a million each year. Mexico ranks third in the number of such interventions, behind only the United States and Brazil.
On July 16, Magnolia celebrated her 29th birthday on her Instagram account, where she has more than 50,000 followers: “Today I want to thank life for giving me 29 years of friendships, learning, experiences and lots of love. Thank you for teaching me to stop in difficult times and to know how to enjoy, share and take advantage of good times,” wrote the young woman in the profile where she shared her business and routine. The influencer has had various ventures for renting clothes, selling donuts and also microloans. A few years earlier, Morales had already undergone gastric sleeve surgery, removing part of the stomach, and subsequently lost 250 pounds. Now he intended to have another to bring down another 20.
To pay for the surgery, which cost 65,000 pesos (about $3,200), Magnolia participated in a savings scheme called Cundina, or Tanda, in which each participating person — usually 15 years old and mostly women — deposits about $100 every 15 days at a time person who keeps them. Every 15 days, one of these members receives everyone’s money. Thus, the total amount is distributed alternately. The Cundinera takes one of these stacks as payment. On many occasions these Cundinas are paid for cosmetic surgery and those in charge act as intermediaries between doctors. That’s what Magnolia did with the Surgery Advice organization. She had one of the first shifts to get the money, which in this case was for the surgery.
On July 21, he entered the María del Mar Hospital Clinic in Mazatlán. A person who chose not to give his name for fear of reprisals and who knew about the operation affirms that Magnolia previously had an examination with Dr. Lizárraga, the nutritionist and psychologist, had but can’t remember whether online or in person. Hernán Lizárraga presents himself on social networks as a specialist in “bariatric surgery”. Both his Instagram and Facebook accounts are full of pictures of the doctor with his stomach removed after these gastric sleeve surgeries. To this day, the surgeon practices and shares the history of the cases performed.
According to the family, after the operation, the young woman had severe abdominal pain, difficulty breathing and high blood pressure. Therefore, on July 26, she returned to the same clinic for a check-up. There the doctor tells him that he has a stomach leak that occurs when the sutures are not closed well. According to the Mexican Association for Endoscopic Surgery, gastric insufficiency after laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy is 2.4% and can cause even more complications: “A gastric leak can become a fistula, which clinically manifests as gastric material leaking through the abdominal wall or drainage site.
After that day, Magnolia never leaves the hospital. His sister Esmeralda recounts that in the following two months she was in the same María del Mar clinic, she had about 20 surgeries, including major and minor surgeries, and she lists, “They were surgeries to try and do that To fix the leak and the perforation I had: endoprosthesis, a nasogastric tube, a nasojejunal tube, a mini-bypass and a bypass were placed, gastric lavage and multiple sutures were performed. At that time, the young woman was sedated for much of the time due to severe pain. According to the family, most of these procedures were performed by Dr. Performed Lizárraga himself. “Unfortunately, we do not have full knowledge of the very compromised situation she was in,” says Esmeralda Morales.
Two months later, they transfer her to the Civil Hospital of Culiacán, where, after several ultrasounds, endoscopies and ultrasounds, as Morales points out, Magnolia’s condition is revealed: “She had multiple perforations throughout the digestive system and many torn organs.” that they cannot save her life: “They only gave us a 10 percent chance that Magnolia could go back to a normal life, and that after many reconstructive surgeries.” The family tried anyway: “During these operations, they find other findings, such as that he had several frozen organs and that he had a very small section of intestine.”
“She had good days, bad days and very bad days. She spent 15 days in intensive care, was intubated, put on a ventilator and was able to come off it. She did her best, she followed the medical indications. She came out of the coma, was able to talk again, walk a few steps and walk, but she suffered a lot and her internal organs weren’t working well,” explains Esmeralda. On December 6, due to hospital expenses, the Magnolia family transferred to an IMSS center in Culiacán, where she was staying for exactly a month when she went into cardiac arrest.
After the death of the influencer, the head of the State Commission for Protection Against Health Risks (COEPRISS), Randy Ross Álvarez, has reported that in November 2022 they closed an operating room and a maintenance room at the María del Mar Hospital Clinic for non-compliance with health regulations.
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