The Colorado teen who fell into a coma after her breast implant surgery went wrong has died after 14-months of being in a vegetative state.
Emmalyn Nguyen, 19, of Thornton, Colorado, died on October 4 after catching pneumonia at her nursing home and going into cardiac arrest multiple times during a 24-hour period, her family’s lawyer told KDVR.
The family kept her death private until after her funeral Sunday.
Emmalyn Nguyen, 19, died on October 4 after catching pneumonia at her nursing home. She had been in a vegetative state since August 2019, following breast surgery gone wrong
Emmalyn (pictured) fell into a coma after being put under anesthesia and was allegedly left on the operating table for more than five hours before 911 was called
She was left in a vegetative state after she fell into a coma on August 1, 2019, when she went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing just as she was about to undergo surgery at Colorado Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery in Greenwood Village, Colorado.
Emmalyn’s medical problems allegedly began after Emmalyn received anesthesia prior to the surgery starting.
She was then allegedly left on the operating table for five and a half hours without medical staff calling 911 for help.
Emmalyn’s parents, Lynn Fam and Sonny Nguyen, told KDVR in December 2019 that their daughter wanted breast implants to shore up her self-image after graduating from high school.
Emmalyn’s (pictured) brain injury mean that she couldn’t walk or talk or feed herself and needed 24-hour care. She was showing signs of progress before she died
Emmalyn (in bed) is pictured at the nursing home with her parents, Lynn Fam (right) and Sonny Nguyen (left). She was feed via tube and hooked up to an oxygen machine to breathe
Emmalyn’s parents launched a negligence lawsuit against Dr. Geoffrey Kim (left), her plastic surgeon, and her nurse-anesthetist, Rex Meeker (right)
The teen, who was 18 at the time, had saved $6,000 for the surgery and was said to have been in good health before at the time.
The family lawyer, David Woodruff, said that Emmalyn ‘was left unobserved. No one watched her for about 15 minutes. A nurse comes into the room and finds her blue.’
During the supposed more than five hours Emmalyn was lying on the operating table, Woodruff said that mom Lynn was sitting in the waiting room, not knowing about her daughter’s condition.
Lynn told the news station that at one point, the doctor came out to tell her that she wouldn’t be able to check on her daughter.
‘She’s doing fine and she’s young, maybe that’s the reason why she’s taking longer to wake up,’ Lynn said that doctor told her.
Woodruff said that when the medics arrived, they used CPR to try to revive Emmalyn, but she didn’t regain consciousness.
Her brain injury meant that she was unable to talk, walk or feed herself, so she was placed in a nursing home to get round-the-clock care. She had to be fed through a tube and have an oxygen machine breathed for her.
Prior to her death, Woodruff said that Emmalyn was showing signs of progress, was able to smile at times and was medically stable, CBS Denver reported.
Following the August 2019 incident, Emmalyn’s family launched a negligence lawsuit against plastic surgeon, Dr. Geoffrey Kim, and nurse-anesthetist, Rex Meeker, CRN, who they accused of having caused Emmalyn’s ‘catastrophic brain injury.’
The family said that Meeker didn’t administer Emmalyn’s anesthesia properly and then failed to keep track of her condition. Kim, meanwhile, was said to have performed a resuscitation attempt.
Emmalyn supposedly went into cardiac arrest again and was stabilized, but no 911 call was made.
In the eventual 911 call, Meeker can be heard saying, ‘She’s not conscious. We’ve evaluated her. We’ve estimated a Glasgow score of 6 or 7.’
Anywhere from three to eight on the Glasgow scale indicates a patient is comatose.
Now that Emmalyn has died, Woodruff said the lawsuit will be converted to a wrongful death lawsuit.
Kim’s medical license was suspended on an emergency basis after it was learned that staff waited five hours to call 911 after she lost consciousness.
But, in March, his license was reinstated under a three-year probationary status.
Emmalyn’s father, Sonny, said of the reinstatement: ‘I don’t know what the board is thinking but I think that’s kind of unfair. He nearly killed someone and he only gets three years probation?’
Meeker, the nurse anesthetist, agree to voluntarily stop administering anesthesia in January, but was allowed to continue practicing as a nurse.
In December 2019, Meeker’s lawyer, Douglas Wolaske, told KDVR that ‘Mr. Meeker’s care was reasonable and within the standard of care and we are confident that the facts will bear this out.’
Colorado state records from prior to Emmalyn’s case showed that Kim had not had any previous disciplinary action taken against him.
Meeker was said to have been sued in 2009, after a woman sustained brain damage and died while undergoing breast implant surgery. Meeker was the nurse anesthetist in that case. It was settled in 2012.