Tragic tale of mother who died in hospital while trying to ‘surprise’ husband with ‘boob job’

Medics restarted her heart after three minutes but “her brain was without oxygen for too long”.

Galina was in a coma in hospital for 13 months before she died, shattering devastated family and friends' hopes that she would miraculously recover.

A criminal case has now been launched into the Russian mum's death.

She is the latest in a spate of fatalities linked to plastic surgery in Moscow clinics.

As in other cases, investigators are probing the quality of anaesthetic and drugs used ahead of the surgery amid concerns over the regulation of plastic surgery clinics in the capital.

The woman, from Lipetsk in western Russia, “wanted to surprise her husband by enlarging her breasts after having her children”, said a friend.

“She had secretly saved money for the operation,” the friend added.

She was 29 when she went in for plastic surgery on April 17 last year.

Galina was not monitored for several minutes and although her heart was restarted “her brain was without oxygen for too long”, Ren TV reported.

“Her heart was not beating for more than three minutes when doctors started reanimation,” said the report.

An ambulance rushed her to a major medical hospital, but she was in a coma from which she never woke despite living another 13 months.

Friend Kristina Korostina said: “All of us believed in a miracle and hoped for it.

“God has taken you - please know that we loved you. Rest in peace.”

Galina and her husband Alexander Rakushin had a daughter aged around ten and a son about four years younger.

The Russian Investigative Committee - which probes serious crime - has launched criminal case into unsafe medical services by the clinic, which has not been named.

A separate probe is underway into deaths at a clinic called MedLounge where Natalia Orlova, a well-known Moscow stock exchange trader, died last month.

The 54-year-old was the fourth patient to die in mysterious circumstances in a few weeks amid fears an “angel of death” nurse was to blame.

She had a facelift but afterwards suffered acute spinal pain followed by liver and kidney failure.

She died three weeks after her operation at MedLounge clinic as an urgent criminal probe was already underway into three other suspicious deaths of women plastic surgery patients.

Orlova’s daughter Rada said she was told by three separate medics that an unknown used at the clinic had poisoned her mother.

"I heard from doctors (that) some agent, a poisonous substance which was in the anaesthetic or in other medicines, has been seized by the investigators,” she told Moscow 25 TV channel.

She added: “It acts like a chemical warfare agent. I was told this by three doctors.”

Criminal investigators have not commented on her shock claim.

Reports at the end of April already pointed to an “angel of death” nurse with a possible mental condition being under suspicion at the clinic after three other deaths.

Beautician Marina Kushkhova, 29, died in April after sinking into a coma following an operation to alter the shape of her nose.

The same month, a Canadian woman, aged 41, died after travelling to the Russian capital for breast implant surgery at the same MedLounge clinic.

Another woman who died soon after plastic surgery treatment here has not been named.

Two other patients remain in “grave” conditions in intensive care.