California Deaths After Lap Band Surgery Lead to Lawsuits

A lawsuit seeks damages in the death of a 50-year-old California woman who died last July, five days after Lap Band surgery. Laura Faitro of Simi Valley died after undergoing surgery at Valley Surgical Center in West Hills, Calif.

Her husband, John, said Ms. Faitro became interested in the surgery after seeing television commercials for 1-800-GET-THIN. But a few days after the surgery, she was hospitalized with an infection and later died. (Read consumer complaints about weight loss companies).

She is the fourth Southern California patient to die following surgery related to the 1-800-GET-THIN advertising campaign, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Faitro's suit charges that there were three lacerations on her liver and her abdominal cavity was filled with bloody fluid, KABC-TV reported.  His suit claims that in 2009, California accused one of the surgeons who operated on his wife of "gross negligence arising from surgeries performed on three patients, two of whom died as a result of his gross negligence." 

Faitro claims surgeons discharged his wife despite her complaints of severe abdominal pain, and that the pain was so intense it forced her to seek help at the Simi Valley Hospital emergency room. She died on July 26 of "multi-organ failure and infarction due to shock, secondary to bleeding and sepsis in the abdominal cavity," according to the complaint.

But attorneys for 1-800-GET-THIN say the woman's death was caused by a heart attack, not by the surgery.

"Obesity leads to heart attacks so what you have here is the complication of the heart attack had little or nothing to do with the surgery," Oxman told KABC-TV.

The death certificate lists the primary cause of death as a cardiopulmonary arrest but also mentions the liver laceration as a significant condition contributing to death, KABC said.

The Lap-Band is a ring that is placed on the upper part of the stomach forming a small pouch. It is supposed to cause patients to experience a full feeling and restrict their dietary intake.

The suit names Valley Surgical Center, 1-800-GET-THIN LLC, Simi Valley Hospital and all the doctors who performed the surgery.