At What Cost Beauty?

Sometimes a patient can appear to do everything right but still end up paying the ultimate price. For her chin tuck, a procedure generally characterized as routine, Goldsmith chose the best board-certified plastic surgeon royalties could buy and had the operation at a respected hospital but still had a bad reaction to anesthesia. Her death was not necessarily related to plastic surgery; it might very well have happened during an emergency appendectomy. It did, however, cause a momentary flutter in the plastic-surgery community. Doctors across Florida, California and New York said they received a few concerned calls from patients that week. But virtually no surgeons reported any cancellations. And the phones kept ringing for new appointments. --With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and Siobhan Morrissey/Miami