Family of 39-year-old man who died following hair transplant in Spain denied compensation

A court has ruled out 'a causal relationship' between the cosmetic procedure and the death and exonerated the clinic from paying 633,000 euros to the next of kin

Josu García

Biscay

Monday, 14 April 2025, 14:47

A provincial court in Biscay in the north of Spain has dismissed the civil lawsuit filed against a doctor and a clinic in Bilbao for the death of Rafael - a 39-year-old Cantabrian who died in 2019 shortly after suffering a crisis during a hair implant surgery. The judges have rejected the claim, which asked for a compensation of up to 633,000 euros, stating that there was no malpractice or negligence on the part of the doctor or the Dermitek centre.

The sentence has now been appealed by Rafael's family and is pending before the Supreme Court. This is the family's last chance to receive a compensation payment and acknowledgment, as the criminal investigation was definitively closed in August. That was when the court closed the reopening of the case, which had been prompted by a new expert report claiming that the man had received an abnormal amount of anaesthesia.

The final ruling of the judge, supported by the magistrates, is that the death was due to "sudden cardiac arrest without structural alteration, with suspicion of canalopathy". Rafael's indisposition would have coincided in time with the hair transplant operation, as stated by one of the medical experts. The court therefore rejected a causal relationship.

Rafael's family appealed and tried to prove several irregularities, putting forward 11 grounds for the appeal to be upheld. Some of these could require the trial to be repeated. For example, their lawyer said that the decision not to admit, once proceedings were already under way, an expert report warning of an “anesthetic overdose” during the operation may have compromised the legal process.

The appeal

Such a report was not provided initially, because Rafael's autopsy was conclusive, stating that the natural cause of death was due to Brugada syndrome, which has a possible genetic origin. The autopsy did not refer to possible misuse of lidocaine as an anaesthetic. It was later that Rafael's brothers took a test, which ruled out the family's genetic susceptibility to cardiac arrest due to Brugada. This detail was added to the family's appeal to the Supreme Court.

However, the new information and the report analysis were not admitted "due to the opposition of Biscay's college of doctors". According to the family (who have been ordered to pay the costs of the most recent trial) this alone would be grounds to annul the hearing and roll back the proceedings. Also cited is the fact that several questions about how the anesthesia was administered were left unanswered.

The rest of the irregularities refer to alleged lack of properly informed consent signed by Rafael, lack of medical material to respond to the crisis that took place during the surgery and failures in first aid care and coordination with the emergency services. Finally, the appeal highlighted that the deceased suffered "disproportionate damage" (death) in an operation that was supposed to only provide an aesthetic hair implant.

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