19 Americans Infected During Plastic Surgery Trips, Report Finds
Nineteen women who traveled to the Dominican Republic for cheap plastic surgery over the past year came home with nasty, hard-to-treat infections, health officials reported Thursday.
More than half got treated at a single clinic, but cases were traced to seven other clinics in the Caribbean nation, the officials reported. They all seem to be caused by bacteria related to the tuberculosis bug, especially one called Mycobacterium abscessus.
“Fourteen (74 percent) were hospitalized in the United States and required multiple therapeutic and corrective surgical procedures and long courses of antibiotics,” the officials wrote in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly disease and death report.
