LOS ANGELES — Inside a clinic wedged next to a smoke shop in a South Los Angeles strip mall, Dr. Mohamad Yaghi operated on a 28-year-old woman who had traveled from Las Vegas to have fat trimmed from her arms and stomach. Yaghi had been offering liposuction for roughly seven years when he started making incisions that day in October 2020, but he was trained as a pediatrician, according to a formal accusation later filed by state regulators.

When the woman stopped breathing less than an hour into the surgery at La Clinica de Los Angeles, paramedics were summoned, according to the accusation. The mother of four died days later at Good Samaritan Hospital, unable to recover from the loss of oxygen to her brain.

Across the country, physicians from a range of specialties have ventured into the lucrative world of cosmetic surgery. Some have branched out with little or no surgical training.

Although rules differ from state to state, licensed physicians in the U.S. generally aren’t required to stick to practicing in the fields they studied during their medical education.

In California, “you could be trained in pediatrics, and then, if you have the 'cojones,' you could be doing surgery,” said Dr. Michael S. Wong, former president of the California Society of Plastic Surgeons.

The L.A. practice where Yaghi worked was initially a family medicine clinic with an emphasis on pediatrics, according to the accusation by the Medical Board of California. He began offering “aesthetic services” around 2009, starting with sclerotherapy to treat unsightly veins and working his way up to breast augmentation, regulators said.

The state investigation into the woman’s death faulted him for alleged violations such as proceeding with surgery that involved sedation when he knew — or should have known — that the patient had recently consumed food or water, which increases the risk of food getting into the lungs.

Performing an elective surgery on a patient with “uncontrolled” diabetes was also “an extreme departure from the standard of care,” according to the accusation. The California Medical Board accused Yaghi of incompetence, gross negligence and other failures, prompting him to surrender his license earlier this year.

Yaghi had been drawn to cosmetic procedures “to expand his knowledge base and provide further access to patient care for his patients,” according to a statement provided by his attorney, who added that “cosmetic procedures always remained a minority part of his practice.”

Months after the death, Yaghi wrote a refund check for $6,500, according to the state accusation. The woman’s family later sued for malpractice and reached a settlement last year.

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