Doctor arrested on suspicion of keeping patient in private prison in RJ

The Civil Police of Duque de Caxias arrested the Ecuadorian surgeon Bolívar Guerrero Silva, 63, this Monday (18), in a private hospital in Baixada Fluminense, in Rio de Janeiro.

He is suspected of keeping a patient in private prison for more than a month, since an aesthetic procedure on the woman’s belly had complications, to the point of necrosis. The report was unable to contact the doctor’s defense.

On social media, a message published on the plastic surgeon’s profile states that the patient’s discharge would be imprudent at that point in the treatment.

Cremerj (Regional Council of Medicine of the State of Rio de Janeiro) opened an investigation to investigate the facts.

The Civil Police were on Monday morning at the Santa Branca private hospital, in the Vinte de Cinco de Agosto neighborhood, to temporarily arrest the plastic surgeon and rescue the patient. In addition to the temporary arrest warrant, the agents carried out search and seizure warrants.

The doctor testified on Monday. Other witnesses will be heard throughout the week.

The case arrived at the police station through the patient’s family, after the woman underwent a tummy tuck at the clinic where Silva works, in March. The aesthetic procedure is performed to remove excess fat and skin from the abdomen.

Weeks after the surgery, according to the family, the woman felt sick and needed to be seen again. Since then, she has remained at the private hospital where Silva works. According to family members, she has a necrotic belly.

In a note, the direction of Santa Branca Hospital says that it repudiates “any criminal practices that were wrongly attributed to us”. “Such an accusation is absurd”, reads the message of the institution.

Management argues that the patient was admitted on June 1 to a private apartment with a companion, but “refuses to leave the unit”. Also according to the note, the entire cost of hospitalization is paid by the doctor himself.

Silva has been registered with Cremerj since 1996. On social media, he often publicizes his work as a plastic surgeon — on Instagram, he has more than 36,000 followers.

According to the surgeon’s private secretary, an initial consultation costs R$ 250. A price list of the aesthetic procedures performed by him indicates that an abdominoplasty costs approximately R$ 9 thousand.

In a message addressed to patients, published on the surgeon’s profile on social media, the doctor’s team argues that Silva went “to provide clarification at the police station”. The Civil Police confirms, however, that he was serving a temporary arrest warrant issued by the Justice.

The message also states that he did not keep the patient in false imprisonment, he was just dressing, and that he will soon “explain himself”. “Is it over there [a paciente] wanted to be released without having finished the treatment, and he as a doctor would be imprudent to release her”, says the note.

“He said he could release her if she signed the discharge in absentia and she didn’t want to sign, he said he would release it only if she signed. As she didn’t sign, he didn’t release her. Besides, she had a special bandage to speed it up. healing. And this dressing can only be handled by people trained in nursing techniques or nurses.”

Silva had already been arrested in 2010, after an operation by the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro against a group accused of selling and applying medicines without registration with Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency).

The scheme had been operating since 2005. The owner of a pharmaceutical laboratory that produced botulinum toxin, botox, sent the products from Goiás to Rio, where they were redistributed to private clinics. The unregistered product was sold at half the normal commercial price at the time. One of these buying clinics was that of Bolivar Guerrero Silva.