«Nose reshaping in 20 minutes». This is the promise of surgeon Marco Antonio Procopio on social media, from TikTok to Instagram, which Margaret Spada also believed. So much so that he started from Sicily, where he lived in the Syracuse area, to reach the clinic in the Eur district of Rome where Procopio practiced together with his father Marco.
INSIGHTS
A rhinoplasty operation which the girl never managed to undergo: she died at the age of 22 after the administration of anesthesia. For his death, the Rome Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation, father and son under investigation, the medical practice seized by the Nas carabinieri.
Who is Marco Antonio Procopius?
Born in Brazil, 32 years old, Marco Antonio Procopio is the surgeon who had to operate on 22 year old Margaret Spada, in an outpatient clinic in a medical center in the capital at number 410 viale Cesare Pavese, in the Eur area. Graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the The “Vasile Goldis” university of Arad, Romania, is one of the two investigated for the young woman’s death.
The investigation
The medical practice was seized by the Nas carabinieri and the Rome Prosecutor’s Office opened a case for manslaughter on the matter. The investigators also seized the medical records from the Sant’Eugenio hospital where the girl had been taken in very serious conditions and died after four days of agony. The autopsy, which will be carried out in the next few days, will establish the exact causes of death, which occurred on November 7th. According to what has been reconstructed, the young woman felt ill after the administration of local anesthesia in the facility where she had arrived with her boyfriend from Sicily.
Margaret Spada reportedly located the medical center after seeing an ad on TikTok. The file is entrusted to prosecutor Erminio Amelio who has delegated the investigations and acquisitions to the Nas carabinieri. As far as we know, in the structure, which does not have an external sign, no documents, medical records, informed consent or registration relating to the intervention were found.
The doctor on TikTok
Margaret Spada had chosen the doctor’s office in which to undergo rhinoplasty surgery by scrolling the videos published on TikTok on her smartphone. She had come across a sponsored by Dr. Marco Antonio Procopio, more than 20 thousand followers on the Chinese social network and 16 thousand on Instagram, she had contacted him directly and made an appointment for November 4th. She would die three days later. Today all of the surgeon’s accounts are closed or deleted, but online it is still possible to find traces of the content he published to advertise his aesthetic procedures. For the reshaping of the tip of the nose, Procopio proposed an operation under local anesthesia lasting 20 minutes, without swabs and with the closed nose technique. «Noses coming from Rhinoplasty and Rhinofiller can also be submitted», he specifies in a post dated January 15, 2024. And then the videos of the “before and after” of his work.
The boyfriend’s video
In the investigation documents there is also a video of a few seconds shot by the girl’s boyfriend. The video would film the moment in which the doctors were trying to resuscitate the girl who had felt ill after the administration of anesthesia. The autopsy will take place on Friday at the Tor Vergata polyclinic and the two suspects are accused of manslaughter. “The absurd thing is that in any case it was a routine operation and that a 22-year-old girl goes home in a coffin is unacceptable for the family.” Said the lawyer Alessandro Vinci, lawyer for Margaret Spada’s family. “I would be cautious when talking about an operating room, we were certainly not in a hospital facility: it is a clinic, a medical center,” he added.
