Melissa Rivers Suing Doctor Who Performed Biopsy On Joan Rivers
Published on October 6, 2014. Updated October 15, 2014The end was only the beginning for Joan Rivers’ posthumous career in drama. The late comedienne is at the center of controversy that surrounds, and allegedly caused her death.
Melissa Rivers, daughter of the late Joan, is planning to sue the physician responsible for what she alleges was an unauthorized biopsy. According to Melissa, the doctor found something unexpected on Joan’s vocal chords, and was concerned, so he decided to take a tissue sample during a routine procedure, instead of alerting Joan after the procedure and scheduling a hospital setting for the biopsy.
The doctor–the very same who snapped a photo of himself next to Joan under the influence of anesthesia–claims that he did not perform a biopsy.
If you’re unfamiliar with what a biopsy actually is… it’s a sampling of living tissue that is most often examined by a pathologist to determine if the grouping of cells is benign or malignant.
Melissa, and her team of attorneys, have called upon medical expertise to state that a biopsy should have been done in a hospital setting. Do they have a case? It’s 2014. There’s always a case.
There are a couple ways to look at this, and it’s worth mentioning: a biopsy done in a hospital setting is not always a necessity. There are many outpatient offices performing such procedures. It depends on the difficulty of the biopsy. For this doctor, it was likely he had the capability of taking a small tissue sampling, because he was concerned about what he might have found and would want to address any major issues like cancer in the immediate.
Also, this was one of Joan Rivers personal physicians. He wasn’t some random doctor, or a referral. He was Joan’s Ears, Nose and Throat guy. It’s not hard to believe she’d have OK’d anything with him prior to any procedure if the doctor deemed it necessary.
On the other side of the spectrum: The selfie really throws this cat under the bus. What was he thinking?
One thing you can be sure of if you’re a physician in 2014. You may prolong a person’s life 10 times, but if they die in your chair or on your operating table on the 11th… you’re getting sued.
For more on this developing story, check out the video below.
Also Check Out: The 14 Most Shocking Celebrity Deaths Of The Millennium (So Far)!