A Pattaya plastic surgery clinic has paid a woman 765,000 baht to compensate her for cosmetic lip surgery complications.
Piyapat Howilailak, owner of V-Safe Clinic on Central Road, announced the settlement offer to 22-year-old Widara Park at a media conference Nov. 1. Park later updated her Facebook page to say she had accepted the offer and received the cash.
Piyapat called the briefing a day after Widara filed a police complaint against the year-old clinic, claiming a lip surgery led to an infection, that follow-up treatments left her disfigured and that, after initially offering compensation, the clinic owners refused to speak further with her.
Piyapat claimed Widara distorted the truth and that the infection was of her own making. Nonetheless, to protect the reputation of his business and that of his surgeon brother, Piyapong Howilailak, they followed through on their compensation promise, taking full blame for the botched surgery.
The coffee shop employee’s ordeal began Sept. 20 when she followed a Facebook advertisement to purchase a lip-alteration procedure for 15,000 baht.
She claimed she suffered serious, unusual bleeding during the operation and that it took four hours to complete. She returned for a follow-up appointment three days later and was told it had become infected.
She said she was told to return each day for a week for injections and she underwent several more procedures to remove infected tissue and repair the damage. However, she claimed, at the end, she was left with a disfigured mouth that made her embarrassed to go out in public.
Widara said she demanded the clinic compensate her so she could have the surgery redone properly in South Korea. At that point, she said, the clinic cut off negotiations and left her no choice but to turn to police.
Piyapat denied Widara’s claim about bleeding during the surgery performed by Piyapong. He also said the woman refused to return for the required follow-up treatments, leading to the infection getting worse.
He said the clinic did offer her compensation to have a foreign surgeon perform a new surgery in Thailand or go to another clinic. But he said Widara refused those options, leading him to believe she wasn’t really interested in going to South Korea but, instead, would get the surgery done for less in Thailand and pocket the difference.
Nonetheless, he said, the clinic accepted blame for the entire ordeal and made what it considered a fair offer of 765,00 baht, which Widara accepted.
