In a lawsuit filed yesterday, a Camden County woman accused her orthopedic surgeon of "rubbing a temporary tattoo of a red rose" on her belly while she was under anesthesia.
The patient discovered the tattoo below the panty line the next morning, when her husband was helping her get dressed to go home after the operation for a herniated disc, her attorney, Gregg A. Shivers, said.
"She was extremely emotionally upset by it," said Shivers. The suit, filed on behalf of Elizabeth Mateo in Camden County Superior Court, seeks punitive and compensatory damages from Steven Kirshner, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon with offices in Marlton and Lumberton, both in Burlington County.
Kirshner does not deny placing the tattoo - and has left washable marks on patients before to improve their spirits, his lawyer, Robert Agre of Haddonfield, said last night. He said none has complained.
"What's offensive about this complaint is that it suggests something he did was intended to be prurient, and nothing could be further from the truth," said Agre."It was intended just to make the patient feel better."
Nevertheless, said Art Caplan, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's Department of Medical Ethics, "you cannot do something like this even as a joke."
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