Dr.Sompob Sansiri is a very well known plastic surgeon in Thailand. And because of that there’s a marketer/doctor who has been trying to use the fame of Dr.Sansiri to promote himself, in a very wrong way!!! Please read on…

Thorough discussions have been posted here and elsewhere about the physician’s responsibility to maintain his or her certifications and to keep good records to those effects , about the patient’s responsibility to ensure that a potential physician is actually qualified to do the procedures for which he or she has been hired , and the important distinction that a potential patient should make between whether warnings issued about a given doctor are verifiable, legitimate concerns, or just a case of an unknown competitor sending out libelous information in order to bolster his own practice or to simply defame the doctor about which the so-called warnings have been issued .

Please see for yourself, these links below are to the articles that written by the same writer and all of them cheer up the name of “Dr.Pitch of Bangkok”. And the writer use the email address called richarddvinson48 (at) gmail.com.

Did you spot the problems of these fake claim articles? If not try these pictures below (click them to enlarge).

Whereas it’s easy to assume that many discussions of this nature come from a completely hypothetical place– and, indeed, when these articles were written, this was true– occasions do arise wherein these hypothetical situations become a reality and, as such, it’s incumbent upon those of us whose duty it is to uphold ethical practices in medicine to address them. To that end, there has been an image ascribed to Dr. Sansiri’s practice of a badly botched breast lift/augmentation procedure that left the right breast, nipple, and underarm severely disfigured.

The image in question is often leveraged on web pages to direct patients to a Dr. Pitch of Bangkok, thought to practice at Yanhee International Hospital. Whereas it’s unclear as to whether Dr. Pitch is directly involved in this smear campaign, it’s undeniably true that most of the occurrences of the image– allegedly ascribed to Dr. Sansiri’s practice– often include a suggestion that prospective patients refer themselves to this other physician.

This is a simple matter of negative marketing, not one of responsible whistle-blowing. If Dr. Pitch is, in fact, directly involved in this libel, he has not only been complicit in a crime, but has also broken rules of ethical conduct that would normally result in a counter-claim.

Caution: There’s only one guy called “Dr.Pitch of Bangkok”. So putting this nickname inside all those fake claim articles is enough for him to get new patients, and money.

Must see the image below. (Click it to enlarge)

The author of these posts– and we use the term loosely here– is only identifiable by an email address, richarddvinson48 (at) gmail.com. Search engine inquiries into the account yield 4 pages of search engine results, mostly off blank social networking and freelance writer pages. This suggests that whoever posted these pictures created this email address expressly for the purpose of spreading this photo around. All attempts to contact this email address have failed to yield a response.

While this image definitely reflects a tragic mishandling of a procedure and its subject definitely has a right to both correct the botched surgery and pursue any and all legal and financial recourse from the physician who performed the procedure, it’s highly unlikely on a practical level that Dr. Sansiri was the offending physician. The reasons are as follows:

In the first place, the blog entry to which the picture is attributed is totally without any text. That is, if this were truly a case in which Dr. Sansiri made these mistakes, it stands to reason that either the patient herself or her legal council would have made sure to both write an account of the pre-operative consultations and post-operative complications on the website and notify the proper authorities to pursue litigation. While it’s unclear as to whether any lawsuit has been filed, the first part of this reasoning– that the injured party or her representative would make sure to account the incident, given that the forum in which it was placed is so very public– would have made sure to do so at least as a measure of ensuring public safety. They did not.

Secondly, the nature of the internet is such that any image can be uploaded from any location, and tracing the origins of those uploads are nearly impossible to verify. The nature of image searches on Google, for example, is quite simple, if sometimes time-consuming: all one needs to do is specifically search for the kind of image they want. Whether the image is subject to copyright or not– and in many cases, they are– extraction of these images is as simple as finding the image one wants, then either copying or dragging and dropping that image onto a desktop. After the image has been acquired, any user can place any image they want anywhere else on the web. If copyright protection for images were adequately encrypted so that theft of these images were made virtually impossible, the verification process for these images would be easy. The protections are, unfortunately, grossly inadequate and, as such, verification is nearly impossible.

Thirdly, Dr. Sansiri’s own qualifications and associations make it virtually impossible for him to have been directly associated with these botched procedures. For instance, Dr. Sansiri has been independently confirmed to be a member of the following organizations, under which the procedure in question applies:

– Board Certified Member, International Academy of Aesthetic Medicine (IAAM)
– International Member, American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (AACS)
– Click here to see more certifications.

If you can prove that these photos of the patients (see below) belong to us, we will pay you $10,000 USD.

We are ready to go to any court, don’t be a coward….
if you are the patients in these photos and we did you wrong, then sue us pleaseeeeee.
The photos below are from the articles that the writer posted on free blog networks, and they are not ours.

Dr. Sansiri’s affiliations and associations with other organizations (all of which can be viewed here ) can be independently verified by anyone who reads this by going to the official websites provided at the end of this article. To bolster the point, however, it’s necessary to stress that this writer has specifically been in contact with the two organizations listed above in the last 48 hours of having posted this article.

According to Ellen Dahlin, Business Manager of the Western US Region of the IAAM, the following are the qualifications for membership within said organization:

− Completion Of a Level 1 Certification involves two brief courses of training and a verbal and written examination upon completion of the courses, to be renewed once per year.
− A verified copy of a medical license must be submitted with each application.
− Board certification (which applies to Dr. Sansiri) must be renewed every ten years. Dr. Sansiri’s membership is up-to-date.

According to Brian Jones, member coordinator of the AACS, yearly renewal of membership requires the following:
− Verified copy of the physician’s CV
− Copy of the physician’s medical license
− Official endorsement by either a current member in good standing of the AACS, A chief of surgery/staff of a hospital, or a colleague with whom the applicant has been associated for at least 2 years.

The qualifications for membership in these two organizations alone require that many, many reputations– including those of the organizations themselves– are rigorously vetted before they’re granted. The risks in either fabricating or misrepresenting these associations are not only too great upon the physician in question, but on the institutions themselves.

For those with further questions about Dr. Sansiri’s other qualifications, it’s highly recommended that you contact the rest of these associations yourself. In the mean time, again, it’s important that any potential patient is acutely aware that the decisions they make regarding their own care is well researched and verified by as many outside, credible sources as possible. International Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, and association of the International Board of cosmetic Surgery
The American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine
The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery