Woman Sues Vegas Plastic Surgeon After Contracting Flesh Eating Bacteria

A 23-year-old woman is suing her Las Vegas plastic surgeon after a flesh-eating bacteria nearly killed her.

Ashleigh Cope went to VIP Plastic Surgery in November 2019 to fix a complication from an earlier breast implant surgery. Dr. Christopher Khorsandi did liposuction and a fat graft around Thanksgiving of last year to fix the complications and hold her implants in place.

The repair didn't happen at a surgical center, but at Khorsandi's office in Henderson, according to the lawsuit.

"He said it didn't need to be in a center, that they do it all the time. Of course, I trusted my doctor," Cope told KTNV.

The lawsuit suggests that Khorsandi's office is where Cope contracted the streptococcus bacteria that led to her developing the rare flesh eating disease necrotizing fasciitis.

Just days after the procedure, on Nov. 26, 2019, Cope became violently ill and went to the emergency room at Green Valley. There she was diagnosed as septic. Cope is also suing the free-standing ER because it took nine hours before she was transferred to an intensive care unit.

Cope was then taken to Henderson Hospital, which was unequipped to treat her. She was later sent to University Medical Center, where she stayed for four months.

“She has lost skin and tissue, basically muscle, over approximately 40 percent of her body, to include a large scar on her right bicep, then massive loss all across her back and legs. People don’t survive statistically that loss of tissue, at least don’t survive without losing limbs," Cope's lawyer, Matthew Hoffman, told the Las Vegas Review Journal.

While she was hospitalized, Cope went into cardiac arrest and her kidneys started to fail. Cope has undergone 18 surgeries, including skin grafts.

Cope is now at home and going to physical therapy, but she experiences pain caused by nerve damage and has weakness in her legs.

"Now she is doing well, all things considered, but she has quite a road ahead of her. She will never be anywhere close to what she was," said Hoffman.

Photo: Getty Images