What are the patient's rights regarding substances used during surgery?
I had facial surgery and afterwards my face appeared to be covered with a white film. When it started flaking off, I called the doctor (due to unusual circumstances, I was able to call him) and he told me that they had washed my face with baby shampoo but did not leave anything on my skin.
I asked, repeatedly, for the name of this "baby shampoo" because it caused my face to peel (I'm on the second or third peeling now!) and I need to know the ingredients. I finally got the ingredients, mostly misspelled, with no product name of manufacturer, and it doesn't look like baby shampoo to me.
Don't I have the right, as a surgical patient, to know what was used on my skin? Especially considering the adverse reaction and the setback to my efforts of improving my skin? This has undone the excellent effects of over $300 of state-of-the-art face products. Don't I have the right to know what they used, so I can be very careful that this never touches me again?
The surgeon is board certified and a member of this website. This isn't a cut rate operation, I paid premium prices.
I'm sorry to hear of your highly qualified surgeon minimizing your concerns. Patients have a right to everything that was done in their procedure, including products used in preparation. Skin should not peel from such preps and if you skin is peeling as it is, you can consider seeing a Dermatologist for possible solutions since your not getting any help from your surgeon.
Yes you do have the RIGHT to know everything that was done during your procedure including the names of the products used. All the information that is in your medical file belongs to you.
Surgeos routinely clean the skin with some kind of antiseptic before making an incision and any one of them can cause some dermatitis or inflammation on a random basis. The most common products used is Betadine which contains iodine and many people are allergic to iodine and have problems with shellfish or certain kinds of radiologic dyes so It would be good for you to know if they used this product. There are other proprietary solutions that are used as as as an antiseptic and anyone Of them can cause some irritation o.r true allergy .
I would recommend you asking the Dr. the exact name of the product that they used for the prep So you can avoid it in the future.