Plastic surgeon is a “butcher” on the run, but his clinics in Moscow are open

Plastic surgeon is a “butcher” on the run, but his clinics in Moscow are open

Elchin Mamedova is wanted by Interpol. Photo: ok.ru

10 YEARS IN A COMA

The rays of the spring sun burst through the blinds and play with the images of saints at the head of Muscovite Anna Spitsyna. Nearby is a wheelchair with a license plate like a car. It bears the coat of arms of Russia with a horseshoe for good luck and the name "Anna S".

- Today she is such a sleepyhead. — Nurse Lena (originally from Donbass) carefully strokes the lying woman’s head. - Now let’s eat and go for a walk in the park. We’ve already looked for two gurneys, our friendship is entering its ninth year, right, An?

Anna is 44 years old. Liquid food is drawn into a syringe. After a minute, the nurse inserts it through a tube directly into the stomach. Then some water. Anya’s neck, like ten years ago, is wrapped in a tight gauze bandage. The same one was put on her for the first time after the fateful operation in 2008 (she decided to correct the shape of her chin). Today, thanks to experts, it became known that surgeon Elchin Mamedov lost the patient already on the table when he ordered her blood pressure to be reduced to a minimum. Then he ordered a bandage to be applied to the wound and left the clinic. Since then, Anna has not come to her senses. She, doctors say, has moved from a coma to a chronic vegetative state.

Her husband Kirill comes to the bed. My wife is nearby, she’s alive, but there’s no talking, no hugging...

- That’s it, I can’t! - He recoils from the bed. — Doctors say that she perceives everything like a child. Sometimes he cries when he hears his mother on the phone. My daughter Zhenya is almost 18. She rarely comes here now: she entered college, and every meeting with her mother is stressful for a week.

Kirill has to be strong, because the criminal who ruined his wife’s life is still at large.

Anna Spitsyna was so blooming before the operation. Photo: Personal archive of K. Spitsyn

STRANGE HOUSE

— By 2012, Azerbaijani citizen Elchin Veli-ogly Mamedov became not only a citizen of Russia, but also the founder of two clinics in Moscow (the share in the authorized capital of each is 50%, or 10 thousand rubles). — Kirill Spitsyn shows extracts. - “Lux MClinic” on Michurinsky Prospekt and on 6th Street New Gardens. Both are in luxury residential complexes, clearly targeting wealthy clients. In the first one they consult, in the second they operate.

A beautiful house overlooking the Moscow State University building. There are five medical institutions on the ground floor: Boston Institute of Aesthetic Medicine, Sleep Clinic, Beauty Salon, Hemotest, Veterinary Center.

- What kind of phenomenon? Do residents of the house often get sick? — I ask the security guard of the elite complex.

— They spend a lot of time on their health.

And what a coincidence - in this building there is an apartment in which the famous ex-Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko kept billions.

— Where is your “Lux Clinic”?

“It’s on the other side of the house, right under the billionaire’s windows.”

THERE IS NO RESUSCITATION, BUT “NOTHING TO FEAR”?

The hall with a huge chandelier is renovated in the style of the ex-owner of the Cherkizovsky market and the Turkish Mardan Palace hotel Telman Ismailov (this Bakuvian is wanted by Interpol for the murder of two businessmen): oriental arches, snow-white columns, flowers, openwork stairs.

“Put on your shoe covers, take off your clothes,” the stern voice of administrator Natalya is heard from behind the counter.

There are three jackets on the hanger, there is silence in the clinic.

-Have you signed up?

- No, I want to change my appearance so that no one finds out.

— You call in advance, then the doctor will come and advise you. And our operations take place in another building, in Peredelkino. But it’s too early to go there, you need to discuss how you want to change. In any case, you will have to change your passport, otherwise they will not let you into the airport.

- Who will perform the operation?

— Our leading plastic surgeon is Mamedov.

— Mamedov Elchin?

- No, Russif. And Elchin works in Baku. (It turned out that they are brothers. - Ed.)

— Is it possible to have an operation in Baku?

- Yes please, here is the phone number of the administrator Christina, she will contact Elchin.

— Which Mamedov is better to have surgery with?

— Both are good specialists, they have been working for a long time.

— Do you have intensive care in the operating room? Suddenly something goes wrong...

— There is no intensive care unit, but an anesthesiologist-resuscitator is on duty there. Before the operation, get tested; if they are good, there is nothing to be afraid of.

In a conversation with Christina, the price range became clear: changing the shape of the nose using the Mamedovs’ method - 350 thousand rubles, 120 thousand for a new eye shape, forehead lift - 150 thousand, changing cheeks and lips - 200 thousand.

2018 Kirill Spitsyn has been coming to his wife’s room for years. But it’s impossible to talk to her...

Photo: Alexander BOYKO

HOW THEY KILLED ANNA

But 10 years ago, Elchin Mamedov was a star of Muz-TV, starred in the television program “Terribly Beautiful”, with Elena Malysheva... He was known as a fashionable guru of plastic surgery. What went wrong in his operation with Anna Spitsyna? Was this a fatal accident? Or…

Anesthesiologist Alexander Karamyshev spoke in detail about Mamedov’s “proprietary methods” in 2012 in the program “Man and the Law”: “Mamedov performed all operations to earn money, without worrying about patients. He demanded from me that the operations take place under low pressure, on a “dry field”. He wanted the wounds not to bleed. That's why I left him. I refused to do this. I said straight out: I don’t want to participate in killing people.”

“That is, the patient’s blood pressure was reduced to make it more convenient to operate!” According to the case file, during the operation, anesthesiologist Andrei Esakov, on the instructions of Mamedov, lowered the patient’s blood pressure to the minimum - 50/30. The tight bandage on Anna’s neck only worsened the situation - the brain was not supplied with blood for a long time, it was dying,” lawyer Nikolai Mezentsev reads the examination.

KP was one of the first to write about this story. It seemed that Mamedov would not escape responsibility.

“In 2009, Mamedov offered $200 thousand to hush up the matter,” recalls Kirill Spitsyn. -I didn’t take the money then because he didn’t admit his guilt. And he warned that they would be willingly taken “elsewhere.” And the very next day the investigator gave the command to schedule a new examination. Experts' views have changed dramatically. And anesthesiologist Andrei Yesakov had to take all the blame.

But Anna’s husband managed to appeal to deputies and the FSB of Russia to have the case against Mamedov separated into separate proceedings. And then the fun began.

DOCTOR EVIL

“By 2012, it became known that several women were killed and injured at the hands of Mamedov,” Kirill Spitsyn tells KP. “But the investigation was unable to find a direct connection between the operations and the deaths of the victims.” Doctors referred to the fact that the death of 44-year-old Margarita Alekseeva occurred after Mamedov’s operation in 2007 due to a detached blood clot (the real surgeon did not risk reducing the pressure to a minimum for a woman suffering from thrombophlebitis). Later it turned out that other clinics refused Alekseeva’s operation, but Mamedov agreed.

If Spitsyna had died, she would also have been given such a “convenient” diagnosis. But Anna survived, and the blood clot was not found. But the investigation found two more victims. Svetlana Ivanova Mamedov injured her sciatic nerve during surgery. Her husband had to take her to Austria to teach her to walk again.

Patient Tatyana Zhuchkova walked with hellish pain for six months. Mamedov told her that this was normal. She would have died from the onset of sepsis, but was saved during an emergency operation: the doctors... took out a napkin that Mamedov had forgotten in her body.

“All these tragedies led the investigation to the idea that Mamedov did not have a medical education,” Kirill recalls. — In 2010, I contacted the prosecutor’s office with a request to check his education. The check revealed nothing. And in 2012, during searches, Mamedov’s medical documents were confiscated. And they were found to be fake by experts.

It turned out that my wife and the other women were operated on by a man with an Azerbaijani pediatrician diploma! And his Russian certificate as a maxillofacial surgeon turned out to be fake.

- How did he cut people?

“Perhaps I learned to act according to certain schemes, but if something started to go wrong, I simply did not know how to save the patient,” Kirill explained to me.

THERE IS A WANTED BUT NO EXTRADITION

Kirill Spitsyn was able to save his wife only in Germany.

— Treatment there cost up to 2.5 thousand euros daily. He gave 250 thousand euros (Spitsyna paid Mamedov 213,000 rubles for the operation - Author). I had to sell my apartment in Moscow and borrow from friends. Then again. Japanese professors gave chances, specialists at the Pirogov Center and Botkin Hospital urged us to fight. More than a million dollars were spent in 2-3 years!

Seeing how Kirill was fighting for his wife’s life (while caring for his elderly parents and raising a minor daughter), Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2010 turned to the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, for help, and he entrusted Mamedov’s case to the experienced investigator Harry Oganesyan.

We called Harry Khachaturovich to find out how, 10 years later, the case is going, which Russian security forces call among themselves “the case of the butcher surgeon.”

“The case is suspended, then resumed again by our forces. Mamedov’s defense is filing complaints against me and the heads of Russian expert institutions. The fact is that Mamedov has citizenship of both Azerbaijan and Russia. We asked to hand him over. We were refused, suggesting that his case be transferred to Azerbaijan. Here we said no. We have already been burned by this: criminal cases in the homeland of criminals are quickly falling apart.

— They don’t put pressure on you?

“The Azerbaijani press said that Mamedov’s case in Russia is being conducted by an Armenian, and therefore he is being persecuted on ethnic grounds,” there is amazement in the investigator’s voice.

— Business prospects?

- We'll have to judge in absentia. While Mamedov is actually locked up in Azerbaijan, outside of it he will be detained by Interpol.

— What about his clinics in Moscow?

— In 2015, the premises of Moscow clinics were seized. But it turned out that there was nothing special to take there: Mamedov has a share in society, but it is symbolic. But even this energized his defenders.

It is already obvious how the case against Mamedov will end. But there are doubts that all officials who allowed him and similar “butchers” to practice surgery in Russia will be punished.

For some reason, we haven’t heard anything about mass checks of the authenticity of doctors’ diplomas and certificates of private clinics that nest in the entrances of our houses.

VALID “LIGHTS”

The money in the plastic surgery business is crazy and attracts scammers from all over the world. Imagine, somewhere in Latin America an ordinary doctor works who took out a large loan for his studies. In the USA, he will have to pay for it for years, but in Russia or Ukraine, a doctor “from America” is always welcome. You don’t need any insurance, and most importantly, no liability! At the beginning of his career, Mamedov often hung around among Western surgeons, who awarded him high-profile titles. One of them was the American plastic surgeon Ramiraz (it was his methods that Mamedov adopted). According to foreign media, Ramiraz lost his license in one of the states where he had problems with patients. Maybe that’s why Ramiraz was interested in Russian clinics, the founder of which was Mamedov. It seems that their joint project was hindered only by the case of Anna Spitsyna.

Ramiraz recently visited Mamedov at a Baku clinic. Photos of them at the dinner table were leaked to local media. The caption to the photo says that surgeon friends have planned a new project to rejuvenate Azerbaijanis... with stem cells. Ramiraz also frequently visited Kyiv, where great opportunities for plastic surgery have now opened up.

How I avoided responsibility

In 2010, Roszdravnadzor officials, in order to avoid a scandal, issued Mamedov, despite the lack of medical education confirmed in Russia, with a referral to take an exam in the specialty “surgery.” He passed it with a C and continued working.

The 19-year-old son of Mamedov, who died after the operation, Sergei Alekseev: “Mamedov took 300 thousand rubles from the table and gave it to his brother.”

The victim Tatyana Zhuchkova, having received $20 thousand in exchange for the original contract for the provision of Mamedov’s services, said: “I have no claims.”

Kirill Spitsyn: “In 2016, Mamedov’s lawyer offered to take 50,000 euros for Anna’s treatment. The lawyer advised us to take them. Next, I was asked to sign the demands for repeated examinations. Probably Mamedov needed them to ruin the case. I refused to sign the document."

BY THE WAY

In 2014, the famous plastic surgeon Elchin Mamedov was fired from the Baku Caspian Clinic Hospital. Now he practices in the clinic of the People's Artist of the Republic of Azerbaijan Leyla Shikhlinskaya in Baku. There, in 2022, a scandal broke out in the case of employees embezzling money from patients.

WHAT TO DO?

How many similar doctors are there in Russia? News of medical errors and botched surgeries in private medical centers have become the norm. Last year, a 48-year-old resident of the Moscow region died due to a facelift. A year earlier, a 37-year-old resident of Chelyabinsk did not undergo tummy tuck. The death of 53-year-old actress Irina Efremova is also associated with the consequences of plastic surgery. Anesthesia killed a 23-year-old student from Volgograd, who, like Anna Spitsyna, decided to correct her chin.

Recently, in the Omsk region, investigators from the Russian Investigative Committee brought to court a case against a neurologist and the director of Med LLC, who in 2012 treated a 74-year-old woman to death. The grandmother complained of pain in the joint, and she was prescribed a course of electrical stimulation. After the injection, the pensioner developed sepsis and died. Imagine the surprise of the investigators, who found out that the neurologist did not have the necessary education, and the medical center did not have a license.

Education

In 2007 he graduated from the Medical University with a degree in general medicine.
In 2008, he completed an internship at the Department of Faculty Surgery of the Moscow State Medical and Dental University. A.I. Evdokimov, specialty: surgery.

In 2008-2010, clinical residency at the Department of Maxillofacial Surgery at the Center for Dentistry and Maxillofacial Surgery of the Moscow State Medical University named after. A.I. Evdokimov, specializing in maxillofacial surgery.

2011-2014 he completed postgraduate studies at the Department of Plastic Surgery of the State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education First Moscow State Medical University named after. I.M. Sechenov, Moscow. Completed a PhD thesis on the topic “Corrective aesthetic operations on the mammary gland as the second stage of reconstruction after plastic surgery with microsurgical autografts.”

Diplomas and certificates

2009 - XIII International Course on Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery;

2010 — Training course “Endoscopic methods of rejuvenation of the face and neck. Use of facial implants";

2011 — ISAPS course in plastic surgery “I International Training Course” (St. Petersburg);

2011 - National Congress on Plastic Surgery;

2012 - III International Symposium on Plastic Surgery and Cosmetology;

2012 - II National Congress on Plastic Surgery;

2012 – International training seminar on rhinoplasty;

2012 – International training seminar “Complicated cases of aesthetic mammoplasty”;

2013 - IV International Symposium on Plastic Surgery and Cosmetology;

2014 — Advanced aesthetic rhinoplasty, otoplasty and facial contouring. Russia, Saint-Petersburg;

Working methods

Facial rejuvenation:

• Endoscopic lifting of the upper face;
• Endoscopic intraoral midface lift;
• Blepharoplasty;
• Endoscopic intraoral lower blepharoplasty;
• SMAS face and neck lift;
• Endoscopically assisted neck lift.

Rhinoplasty:

• Open rhinoplasty;
• Closed rhinoplasty.

Breast surgery:

• Breast endoprosthetics;
• Endoscopic breast augmentation;
• Breast lift;
• Formation of the areola and nipple.

Tummy tuck:

• Abdominoplasty with navel transfer;
• Endoscopic abdominoplasty;
• Mini abdominoplasty.

• Hand plastic surgery (brachioplasty);
• Buttock surgery (gluteoplasty);
• Lipomodeling of face and body;