Dr. Geoffrey Kim, Denver, Colorado plastic surgeon found guilty in death of teen girl, Emmalyn Nguyen who became unresponsive during surgery following ‘toxic levels’ of anesthesia and waiting 5 hours before calling emergency services.
A Denver, Colorado plastic surgeon has been found guilty of attempted manslaughter following the death of a teenage patient who died 14 months after he botched her breast enhancement surgery.
Dr. Geoffrey Kim, 52, admitted he didn’t call 911 for five hours after then 18-year-old Emmalyn Nguyen went into cardiac arrest when she was given anesthesia by nurse Rex Meeker on August 1, 2019.
A jury found him guilty of attempted reckless manslaughter and guilty of obstructing a telephone after he failed to call for help but not guilty of attempted reckless homicide.
Toxic blend of anesthesia led to girl losing consciousness
Kim who still has his license is set to be sentenced on September 8 and faces anywhere from probation to three years in prison. It remained unclear following the partial guilty verdict whether he would be able to legally practise medicine again.
The charge he was acquitted on was considered the most serious offense, with Kim facing one to three years in prison had he been convicted.
The surgeon had declined to call emergency services in the hope that the girl would regain consciousness and presumably avoid controversy of being given too much anesthesia and the medics complicity. Prosecutors maintained had the girl been rushed to hospital right away she likely would have recovered, FOX31 reported.
Kim’s defense team blamed anesthetist Meeker for the death of Nguyen, claiming he gave her a toxic blend of drugs before surgery, including enough fentanyl to stop her heart, according to the Denver Post.
Meeker initially faced manslaughter charges but had them dropped in exchange for testimony at trial, according to 9news.
Girl’s mother was not told that her daughter was unresponsive on operating table
Last week, he argued Kim wouldn’t let him call 911 for over five hours, KDVR reported.
Both Kim and Meeker have already been forced to pay the Nguyen family $1million each in a wrongful death settlement.
Meeker gave up his license to administer anesthesia but still has his medical license.
Nguyen was left brain dead and couldn’t speak or walk after the surgery and died 14 months later.
Her parents, Lynn Fam and Sonny Nguyen, told KDVR in December 2019 that their daughter wanted breast implants to shore up her self-image after graduating from high school.
The teen, who was 18 at the time, had saved $6,000 for the surgery and was said to have been in good health.
The family lawyer, David Woodruff, said Emmalyn ‘was left unobserved. No one watched her for about 15 minutes. A nurse comes into the room and finds her blue.’
During the more than five hours Emmalyn was lying on the operating table, Woodruff said that mom, Lynn, was sitting in the waiting room, not knowing about her daughter’s condition.
According to the mother, the doctor at one point came out to tell her that she wouldn’t be able to check on her daughter.
‘She’s doing fine and she’s young, maybe that’s the reason why she’s taking longer to wake up,’ Lynn said that doctor told her.
Woodruff said that when the medics arrived, they used CPR to try to revive Emmalyn, but she didn’t regain consciousness. Nguyen was resuscitated on the operating table, forever in a coma, laden with an extensive brain injury.
Her brain injury meant she was unable to talk, walk or feed herself, so she was placed in a nursing home to get round-the-clock care. She had to be fed through a tube and have an oxygen machine breathed for her.
Defense lawyers claimed anesthesia killed patient not 5 hour wait
Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office Captain of Investigations, Travis Stewart, told the New York Post: ‘The investigation has taken more than two years to complete and involved dozens of interviews and search warrants.
‘Our hope is that this will be the beginning of bringing justice and a sense of closure to Emmalyn’s family.’
Prior to her death, Woodruff said that Emmalyn was showing signs of progress, was able to smile at times and was medically stable, CBS Denver reported.
The family said that Meeker didn’t administer Emmalyn’s anesthesia properly and then failed to keep track of her condition. Kim, meanwhile, was said to have performed a resuscitation attempt.
In the eventual 911 call, Meeker can be heard saying, ‘She’s not conscious. We’ve evaluated her. We’ve estimated a Glasgow score of 6 or 7.’
Anywhere from three to eight on the Glasgow scale indicates a patient is comatose.
Kim’s lawyers have continued to claim that the five hours Nguyen was left without proper medical care wasn’t what killed her, but it was the anesthetics that were administered by Meeker.
Colorado state records before Emmalyn’s case showed that Kim had not had any previous disciplinary action taken against him.
Meeker was said to have been sued in 2009, after a woman sustained brain damage and died while undergoing breast implant surgery. Meeker was the nurse anesthetist in that case. The case was settled in 2012.
