COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — On Wednesday, an Ohio plastic surgeon was permanently stripped of her state license to practice medicine after a medical board found she harmed patients while livestreaming their surgeries on social media app TikTok .
The Ohio Medical Board has voted to name Katharine Grawe – in her plastic surgery practice “Roxy Plastic Surgery” and to her many TikTok followers also as Dr. Roxy known – never to practice in state again.
The board said Grawe, whose license was originally revoked in November, neglected her patients while she livestreamed parts of her procedures, spoke into a camera and answered viewers’ questions – all while the surgeries were taking place.
Neither Grawe nor her attorneys responded to Wednesday’s news with a request for comment. Grawe’s TikTok account is currently private.
Courtney Hergesheimer/The Columbus Dispatch via AP
The board warned Grawe about her actions back in 2018, citing concerns about patient privacy and possible breaches of ethics, according to a previous board suspension notice.
The notice also listed three of Grawe’s patients who suffered serious complications after their surgery and required intensive medical care. A week after her surgery, a woman’s intestines were found to be perforated, a procedure Grawe partially livestreamed on TikTok.
According to the release, the unnamed patient suffered severe abdominal damage and bacterial infections, as well as a loss of brain function due to the amount of toxins in her blood.
Samantha Hendrickson is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover undercover topics.
