Florida Racing to Curb Brazilian Butt Lift Deaths, Hospitalizations

MIAMI, FL—Despite Florida's attempts to tighten up Brazilian Butt Lift regulations, this hot new South Florida trend continues to leave behind a trail of botched surgeries, hospitalizations, and deaths.

A BBL surgery involves fat from the abdomen injected into the buttocks to achieve an hourglass figure. They are Florida's most-searched cosmetic surgery procedure on Google, getting more than 20,000 searches a day.

With that, however, comes the most BBL deaths in the country, according to a 2022 study in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal. 25 South Florida women died in 12 years, and 92% of these deadly procedures were performed at budget clinics seen in local strip malls.

The lethal complication from BBLs is pulmonary fat embolisms, occurring when the fat grafts injected into the muscle enter the bloodstream. To address this, Florida passed a 2023 law requiring physicians to use ultrasounds to see that fat is injected only in the upper layers under the skin—not the muscle.

This year, Florida doubled down on their BBL regulations, passing a bill requiring physicians to register their offices as surgery centers if liposuction is performed in which the patient's body is moved at least 180 degrees, or if a gluteal fat grafting procedure is performed.

These new laws have caused old complaints to be thrust into the limelight, specifically involving Miami's Dr. Julio Clavijo-Alvarez, aka JC Alvarez.

While he worked for Miami Lakes Cosmetic Surgery, Alvarez had complaints filed against him for not obtaining patient consent, not performing a pre-operation exam, and then removing an unagreed-upon amount of fat.

Alvarez now works in Coral Gables, where a 2021 complaint on his actions has recently been unveiled. This complaint alleged that his patient ended up in two separate hospitals—both of which he failed to note.

According to the Miami Herald, Clavijo-Alvarez documented meeting with her, but reported that "she had not experienced any pain since the BBL procedure."