Man Sues Doc after "Flesh-Eating Bacteria" Consumed His Penis Days after Implant Surgery
A Peruvian man who had to have his penis amputated after it was infected by “flesh-eating bacteria” following an implant surgery is suing his anesthesiologist in a Miami courtroom for medical malpractice.
Enrique Milla had decided to have the implant operation to help cure his impotence, but later had to have his member amputated after a Gangrene infection spread throughout his penis about nine days after the surgery, The Miami Herald reports.
Milla and his wife Gloria are seeking "tens of millions" in damages from Dr. Laurentiu Boeru for overlooking his pre-existing conditions like uncontrolled diabetes and failing to postpone his elective penile implant surgery which led to complications following the procedure and eventually the life-saving amputation of his penis, according to Local 10.
Milla’s lawyer, Spencer Aronfeld, said that Dr. Boeru should have never approved the surgery because Milla’s vital signs like blood pressure and blood sugar levels were way too high on the day of his surgery back in August 2007 at Coral Gables Hospital in Miami.
"He failed to evaluate properly the risks of this procedure for this patient," Aronfeld said, Local 10 reports. “Milla had high diabetes and high blood pressure when they cleared him for surgery. They should postpone the surgery until he got better.”
“He didn’t do this to have a bigger penis,” Aronfeld, told the Miami Herald. “This was because of medical reasons: He just wanted to have relations with his wife.”
However just a little more than a week after surgery, a small infection on Milla’s penis had become gangrene and the bacterial infection had begun eating away at his genitals.
"It turned into a flesh-eating bacteria that ate his penis centimeter by centimeter," Aronfeld said in court as he detailed the traumatic events that unfolded days after his client’s implant surgery, "and as a result of this, he has to spend the rest of his life without a functioning penis. He has to sit down to urinate. He'll never have any intimate relationships with anyone, and he's lost his manhood."
Milla had filed suit in 2009 against Boeru and Dr. Paul Perito, the urologist who performed the surgery, who is also being sued over another penis amputation case after a state prisoner lost his penis after seeing Dr. Perito over an outbreak of bumps.
Dr. Perito had settled with Milla out of court last year, but Aronfeld argued that the only person who had cleared his client for surgery on the day of the scheduled operation was Dr. Boeru, and claimed that the anesthesiologist had been negligent in failing to recognize that Milla’s diabetes made surgery risky which made Dr. Boeru liable.
The 65-year-old man is testifying at the trial via Skype because authorities had deported him and his family back to Peru last year.
“This has been devastating, painful and embarrassing,” Aronfeld said. 'Mr. Milla lived in Miami for 40 years and worked in the medical supply business and paid taxes. It shouldn’t make a difference that he was deported. At the end of the day, he has to sit down to pee through a tube.
“What happened to Mr. Milla was just bad luck. But filing frivolous lawsuits won’t change his bad luck,” Dr. Boeru’s lawyer Jay Chimpoulis said in court.