Tammaria Cotton, a 43-year-old municipal court clerk from Los Angeles, suffered massive blood loss and died of cardiac arrest June 22, 1996, hours after obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Patrick Chavis removed fat from her stomach, bottom and thighs. 
At one point, he left her to recover at his Lynwood office with only a nurse and a worried husband nearby. At the state board's request, a judge on June 19 temporarily suspended Dr. Chavis' license pending a disciplinary hearing. Dr. Chavis' attorney, Robert D. Walker, contends the state's case is based on incomplete records. On its face, tumescent liposuction is simple: a doctor injects a combination of saline solution, a local anesthetic like lidocaine, and epinephrine to reduce bleeding, until the area becomes taut. Then, the surgeon makes a small incision and inserts a tubelike device called a cannula to suction out fat. The procedure seemed so routine to Mrs. Cotton, who'd heard about it from her beautician and church friends, that she didn't even tell her husband until the night before her surgery.
"It was just liposuction!" cried Jimmy Cotton, a police officer, as his wife died in a hospital emergency room. No organizations track such incidents. But Dr. Richard Ruffalo, past chairman of the department of anesthesia at Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, says "For every case in which a death occurs, there's at least 15 to 20 cases where severe injury has occurred." Dr. Frederick M. Grazer, a Newport Beach plastic surgeon, says money is the root problem, especially as doctors' fees are limited by managed care. "Many doctors who were never interested in plastic surgery ... take a weekend course and become interested in things they can bill upfront without insurance," Dr. Grazer said. "They have increased the envelop to see how much they can inject in a patient and how much they can take without killing them."
I tried in vain to find a pic of "Dr". Chavis, to no avail.