A young New Orleans police officer has died days after undergoing a Brazilian butt lift and complaining of “extreme pain” following the risky cosmetic procedure.
Wildelis Rosa, 26, told her family she was traveling from New Orleans to Miami for her birthday in March, unaware that she planned to undergo the nip and tuck operation, her older sister, Anamin Vazquez, told NBC6.
Rosa — who was also a US Army Reservist who had just come back from deployment in Kuwait — had her pre-operative blood work done at Prestige Plastic Surgery Clinic in South Florida on March 19, and the following day, doctors removed fat from 12 areas around her body and injected it into the buttocks.
An invoice for her Brazilian butt lift, commonly referred to as BBL, shows Rosa paid $7,495 for the cosmetic procedure, which typically ranges from $6,000 to $18,000 in the US but is known to be notoriously cheaper in Miami.
Rosa was recovering at a short-term rental and told her family about her BBL three days after the surgery.
However, Vazquez said they immediately had a feeling “in our guts like something is wrong.”
“I texted her and I said, ‘I hope you’re doing okay you’re enjoying your birthday.’ But there was no answer back,” Vazquez said.
The next morning, on March 23, an unidentified friend staying with Rosa found her unresponsive after she collapsed in the bathroom. They immediately performed CPR on her, but she was already gone.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner ruled her cause of death as a pulmonary embolism from blood clots associated with cosmetic surgery, NBC6 reported.
Her friend told the medical examiner that Rosa went for a follow-up appointment the day after her surgery, where she complained of “extreme pain,” and while at their rental, she was having difficulty breathing and her blood pressure had been “drastically” dropping.
The day before her death, her friend also noted she appeared pale, had dilated pupils, her lips appeared purple, and she said she had no feeling in her legs or feet.
Rosa’s heartbroken sister shared that Rosa also texted another friend the night before her death, complaining about her blood pressure and circulation issues in her feet.
Vazquez believes that if these warning signs had been addressed, her baby sister could still be with them.
“It’s that’s the part that we have to live with because it was unnecessary for her to die…to die like that,” she said, noting her sister, the youngest of five siblings, had had hopes of working for the FBI one day before her life was cut short.
Rosa’s demise marks a string of deaths related to cosmetic surgeries in Miami, NBC6 reported.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office has certified 25 deaths due to complications with cosmetic procedures, involving several different doctors and clinics over the last three and a half years.
Brazilian butt lifts have been around since the 1960s but gained significant popularity in the 2010s — largely driven by social media trends and celebrity influence — with a 30% increase in procedures between 2014 and 2015, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
In 2024, nearly 30,000 BBL surgeries were performed in the US, representing 28% of all cosmetic procedures in the US.
However, despite its popularity, the cosmetic surgery has one of the highest mortality rates, with roughly 1 in 15,000 patients dying since safety guidelines were strictly enforced in 2019, according to the National Library of Medicine.
The primary causes of death associated with BBLs are fat embolism and venous thromboembolism, where fat is injected into blood vessels and can travel to the lungs or other organs.
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