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. 2024 Nov 4;60(11):1807.
doi: 10.3390/medicina60111807.

Murphy's Law and Aesthetic Surgery: Are Outcomes Worse in Medical Doctor and Very Important Patients?

Nicola Zingaretti  1 , Francesco De Francesco  2 , Michele Riccio  2 , Massimo Robiony  3 , Alessandro Tel  3 , Salvatore Sembronio  3 , Lavinia Bucciarelli  4 , Pier Camillo Parodi  1
Affiliations

Murphy's Law and Aesthetic Surgery: Are Outcomes Worse in Medical Doctor and Very Important Patients?

Nicola Zingaretti et al. Medicina (Kaunas). .

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Surgeons have long been aware of Murphy's Law: "If anything can go wrong, it will". When applied to surgery, Murphy's Law suggests that if there is a way that an operation can be set up incorrectly then someday, somewhere, it will be set up incorrectly. This paper focuses on complications in medical doctor (MD) and VIPs during aesthetic surgery. Materials and Methods: We evaluated the clinical results of 368 MDs/VIPs (group 1) and 368 non-MDs/VIPs (group 2) who underwent aesthetic surgery (upper blepharoplasty, facelift, breast augmentation) between January 2010 and September 2021. The minimum follow-up after surgery was 2 years. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in the rate of complications between the two groups. Among the treated patients, the percentage of complications was similar to what has been reported in the literature. Interestingly, the time spent in surgery was longer, and there was an increased number of admissions to outpatient clinics in group 1. Conclusions: We suggest changing the current perception of Murphy's Law regarding complications in MD patients/VIPs undergoing aesthetic surgery.

Keywords: Murphy’s Law; VIP; aesthetic surgery; complications; entitled patients; influential patients; midface rejuvenation; patient management; patient safety; physician patients.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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