He was the surgeon of the famous, until a decade ago it began to rain media complaints that later came the Justice. Hannibal Lotocki He was sentenced a year ago by the Oral Court to 4 years in prison and 5 years of disqualification from practicing medicine, accused of serious injuries. The prosecutor had asked for 7 years and 9 months because he considered that he had incurred in the same procedure repeatedly. In addition to Silvina Lunathey accused him Stefanía Xipolitakis, Pamela Sosa and Gabriela Trenchiamong other.
A malpractice record that NEWS investigated for the first time a decade ago, in 2014, which detailed the questioned procedures of Hannibal Lotocki. So, when Diego Lowenstein – Silvina Luna’s family doctor – saw the PET that he ordered for his patient (a tomographic analysis used to make diagnostic images), he could not contain his astonishment.
Luna’s buttock surgery showed unexpected consequences. In 2011, the beautician Aníbal Lotocki – responsible for Vicky Xipolitakis’s breasts, Oriana “Oggi” Junco’s tail and Verónica Ojeda’s postpartum liposuction, among other controversial operations – filled it, according to himself, with 500 cubic centimeters of Luna’s own fat plus a small percentage of polymethylmethacrylate, a chemical used in cosmetic surgery and dentistry approved by ANMAT for use in small amounts, but rejected by a part of the medical community.
Luna, the former Big Brother, was a decade ago admitted for the first time at the Italian Hospital. “Renal colic” was the first cause she reported. A day later, Luna spoke on the air of “Intruders” from her hospital bed. She refused to mention Lotocki, at first, only to end by saying her name. She slipped a possible “malpractice”, she spoke of “cleaning my body” of “certain toxic substances” and “the negligence of the person who operated on me.”
The problem was more serious than it seemed: Luna was discharged on Thursday, June 31, 2014. Her kidneys had undoubtedly been the problem. Through several tests, Lowenstein was able to determine an increase in calcium in the model’s blood, which led to kidney stones.
Also, he detected several granulomas in the process. Luna had started complaining about it a year and a half ago, when she went to see Lowenstein for a series of pains. The Italian’s medical report after discharge reflected “renal failure”, “hypercalcemia” and “bilateral ureteral lithiasis”. This raised the question: what did the operation using methacrylate, a little-known chemical, have to do with the series of kidney stones?
In the office at his medical center in Belgrano, Full Esthetic, Lotocki – the doctor who monopolized the celebrity market in Argentine entertainment – did not tremble while speaking with NEWS. He looked confident in the extreme, with a stack of silicones on his desk. He said that he had been operating tails for more than twelve years, that in addition to Silvina Luna, he had to his credit more than a thousand augmented buttocks, many of them with this procedure of mixing human fat with a little methacrylate.
It assured that the substance was legal, that ANMAT approved it, it even showed medical literature printed in Brazil that endorsed it, and brochures from the European distributor of the substance. “I went to conferences on the subject in Brazil, a doctor there had more than 400 buttock operations with methacrylate and no problem in seven years. There are always complications, but I never had a problem of this type, ”he admitted. But other medical studies suggested otherwise.
witness cases
In 2012, a group of nephrologists from the Italian Hospital presented a paper in the National Congress of their specialty. “Hypercalcemia Secondary to Granulomatous Disease Caused by Methacrylate Injection” was the title, with two control cases analysed. In June of this year, a group of Argentine nephrologists, from institutions such as the Hospital Fernández and the Hospital Alemán, published in an American journal –to later be integrated into the US National Library of Medicine– a work with the same title, with other four cases.
In them, a possible relationship between methacrylate and kidney problems was suggested. Lotocki did not know these texts until before the scandal broke out: he read them days later. However, he unblinkingly defended the substance that led him to a new public trial: “I respect those who do not want to use it. And those who don’t want to use it should respect me! It has not been proven that it affects ”, he affirmed.
Several plastic surgeons shot him with thick ammunition. Doctor Cristian Pérez Latorre became one of his staunch enemies. “No recognized plastic surgeon is going to place this type of product. Quite the opposite. The only thing that can be placed in the buttock is the gluteal prosthesis itself. Otherwise, you look for an aesthetic solution and you take a disease for life, in this case, hypercalcemia”, assured Pérez Latorre.
Mónica Milito, in charge of the clinic that bears her name, a member of the Argentine Medical Association and with studies at Harvard Medical School, affirmed: “The substance is approved in a formula of microparticles suspended in gel, which is used in very small quantities in dentistry and cosmetic surgery for small defects, such as wrinkles. I don’t use it, I don’t like it, it’s a foreign body and it can cause complications. That it is approved by ANMAT does not mean that it is good and safe. I know a lot of complications.”
doctor friend
There is something peculiar in this story. Despite all of his famous surgeries, Lotocki is not a specialist plastic surgeon. “I never introduced myself like this”, he cut himself off. The credentials he wielded for his work, with the lives of his patients on the line, were even more peculiar: “I am a surgeon from the National University of the Northeast, with a degree, which enables me to operate, I always have.” saying. I did a specialty of cosmetic surgery, competitions, practices. I took an exam at the International Academy of Cosmetic Surgery. It is a title that although it is approved in certain places in Europe, the United States, in Argentina it is not.
Lotocki had already faced another death then: In 2007 one of his patients, 21-year-old Romina Vega, died shortly after undergoing liposuction. “I was dismissed, there was no element indicating malpractice,” she defended herself. Today, a decade later, her record is undeniable.
by RN
