Dr. Robert Backstein brought extreme chaos and misery into my life. He further ruined my health and will set me back tens of thousands of dollars. He displayed extreme carelessness at Humber River Hospital on the day of my surgery and lied to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. This doctor uses scam sites like ratemds.com and realself.com. Sites like these many times don’t remove fake reviews written by doctors and their employees. They also allow doctors to pay to have negative patient reviews removed. To see what others have said about these sites click here. Both The Globe And Mail a major Canadian newspaper company and CBC, Canada’s leading news network wrote about it at the links below:
A negative review that I wrote for Dr. Robert Backstein was removed from Google business after being up for one year. I not only witnessed my review being deleted at ratemds.com and google.com, but other patient reviews as well. A negative review written by a patient six years ago was deleted a month before my review was taken down that I posted here. I suspect this doctor is most likely using sites like guaranteedremovals.com to mislead customers by erasing his patients negative reviews from Google business.
The unprofessionalism this doctor displayed with me at Humber River Hospital was profound. On the day I had my gynecomastia surgery there were no pre-op rooms available, so I never got to speak with him in private to go over the surgical plan instead I was sent right into the operating room by a nurse, disrobed and told to wait for Dr. Backstein to arrive. He arrived late so it was awkward just standing in the operating room watching the nurses and anesthesiologist prepare for my surgery. Finally when he got to the operating room he told me to stand still and with his Apple iphone took very bad photos of my chest at extreme close ups and no photos from the sides of my upper body were taken. Please look at the pictures here they are from Plastic Surgeon Photographic standards brochure that covers in detail how patient photos should be taken.
As you can see from the illustration above the importance of side photos as they clearly display and help diagnose the severity/grade of gynecomastia. Oddly enough the side photos he did not take is where he did severe damage to my chest. Plus he didn’t do the most important step that all board certified plastic surgeons do… (mark liposuction area with pen) and liposuctioned me unevenly and in areas I never consented to. He basically targeted the areas I specifically told him not to touch when I first met him in his old office on Steeles Avenue in Toronto called Steeles Avenue Cosmetic Surgery, which he has now moved from and changed the name to minorsurgery.ca. This change in business happened soon after I threatened to sue.
I made it clear to him in his office to only liposuction if a crater deformity existed after taking the glands out and to only liposuction near the nipples or lower section of the male breast. This idiot liposuctioned all the way to my clavicle, front shoulders, sternum and armpits where I specifically told him to not touch as there was very little, just the right amount of fat in those areas. He targeted the contoured areas of my chest that I built up from lifting weights stripping the tissue along the sternum, clavicle, and brutally liposuctioned the edge of my pectoralis muscle in and by my armpits, it’s like he purposely kept going over this area scraping away type II muscle and stripping all the dense connective tissue (fascia) that supported the muscle giving it a firm solid look. A few inches around and underneath the nipple where there was some fat the idiot did not liposuction instead focused on the middle and edge of my chest basically giving me a very deformed sunken (caved in) look that is even worse when flexing. I lost all sorts of feelings in my chest from his brutal liposuction actions causing me permanent nerve damage and pain. A lot of fascia (connective tissue) was stripped away and all that was left in large areas was skin and muscle. One of the many plastic surgeons I spoke to for revision surgery said he wouldn’t be able to do fat grafting because there was no fat left to inject into. To learn more about the importance of fascia and what it does, watch the videos below.
Before I went in for my gynecomastia surgery I checked the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario website to make sure Dr. Robert Backstein had hospital privileges and when I saw he did it brought some relief that I found the right surgeon to do the job. But after my botched surgery and long written complaint I made to the CPSO, I noticed the CPSO had removed his hospital privileges from their website and also heard that he no longer worked at Humber River Hospital. Click here to read why Arthur W. Perry a Plastic Surgeon would be concerned to have a plastic surgeon operate on him if he did not have hospital privileges.
Something else of interest as to why a physician could lose his/her hospital privileges is if the physician had multiple complaints made against them, according to seak.com a website created by attorney Steve Babitsky a consultant whom provides legal advice to physicians and other groups of professionals. On his web site there’s a web page titled 10 Biggest Legal Mistakes Physicians Make and How to Avoid Them. On the numerous mistakes listed it was the final mistake at the bottom of the webpage that grabbed my attention that I posted below.
“Mistake
When physicians have peers talking to them about their treatment of patients, a hospital committee looking at their patient records, and are being asked to appear at peer review meetings to discuss their patient care, it’s time for them to call a lawyer. A physician under that kind of scrutiny is at risk of a reprimand, if not summary suspension. A lawyer’s early intervention can sometimes head off some of the more serious disciplinary measures, many of which are reportable to the National Practitioner Data Bank. This does not mean that physicians should call a lawyer whenever a peer review committee wants to talk to them, but if they are the subject of multiple inquiries, they may need legal advice.
Action Step Physicians who are under scrutiny by peers or a hospital committee should seek legal advice from a lawyer. Once matters have progressed that far, the next step might be action against a physician’s hospital privileges. There is a time to fight and a time to mediate or negotiate, but physicians need the advice of a lawyer to make their way through the maze of hospital bylaws and medical staff requirements.”
So according to the attorney at seak.com it is likely the hospital could’ve took disciplinary action against him. If so, I was never made aware of it as I could have brought this important information up with a lawyer. If you were a former patient of Dr. Robert Backstein and feel you have been mistreated by him, please contact me.
Dr. Robert Backstein also told a lie to the College of Physician and Surgeons of Ontario saying he marked my chest with a pen when he did not. Luckily I recorded him admitting he lied and included the audio recording here. Markings are crucial to correctly performing liposuction and as another doctor said he considers it part of the standard of care. If that alone wasn’t bad enough he damaged my left muscle and caused permanent nerve pain and strength loss. Right after waking up from surgery I had severe pain in my left chest muscle and compression girdle on the left side was soaked in blood. A month later when I tried lifting weight my once dominant left chest muscle would give out and arm would drop. This weakness is also present in my front shoulder. Damaging a person’s muscle during liposuction is extremely rare and is the result of brutal actions by the doctor.
Here is a list of my complaints:
- He did not mark my body with a pen like all other plastic surgeons do, nor did he go over the surgical plan, prior to putting me under the knife.
- Caused damage to my left chest muscle by obliterating the dense fascia along the edge of pectoralis major muscle by my armpit causing skin to stick/adhere to muscle and major scar tissue to form.
- Left deep indentations on both sides of my chest from over liposuctioning.
- Created very noticeable asymmetry.
- He didn’t remove my gynecomastia on right side of my chest which you can see in my MRI picture below that I had 4 months after my surgery.
- He would not admit to doing anything wrong and abandoned me, told me to go get an opinion from another plastic surgeon.
- He lied to the CPSO, wrote in his office file that I had excessive fatty tissue, when he only removed a total of 50 milliliters of fat (10 teaspoons) from my entire chest and caused severe irregularities. He even said to me in his office that he only removed 50 milliliters of fat and my hospital liposuction aspiration record below confirms this.
400ML (1.69 cups) of solution ringers lactate mixed with lidocaine and epinephrine was injected into my chest before liposuction began. When liposuction procedure finished content in canister measured 450ML. 400ML of content in canister was the solution doctor injected and just 50ML was fat. Clearly feels and looks like way more then just 50ML of tissue was taken from my chest. Since fat floats and is measured from top of canister like shown in picture below. What else did this surgeon suck from my chest that ended up in the bottom of the canister?.
- I never went to see him for pseudogynecomastia, but he wrote in the office file that I had a mild case of it. So, if I had a mild case of pseudogynecomastia what in the world was he doing liposuctioning all the way up into my front shoulder, clavicle and armpits. If you google the term pseudogynecomastia it is a condition in which the male breast area has excess adipose (fat) tissue behind, around and under the nipples, so it doesn’t make sense that adipose tissue was taken from my upper chest and front shoulder.
- Dr. Robert Backstein stated in his operating report that he took my glands out first. When 99% of doctors will always liposuction first before taking glands out. I personally spoke with six plastic surgeons and they all concurred and said that liposuction is always done first. This proves that I did not have excessive fatty tissue like he said I did and that the agreement was to only liposuction to feather area if crater deformity existed after taking my glands out.
- After seeing how sample operative reports are written here and comparing them to the brief operative report Dr. Robert Backstein wrote, he didn’t even document the amount of adipose tissue taken from my chest or the type/size of cannula he used.
- Lied to the college of physicians and surgeons about discussing surgical plan with me and marking my body with pen on the day I had my surgery, when he never did.
- Negative reviews I wrote on ratemds.com and google.com were erased and someone else’s negative review that was posted 6 years ago was also erased on Google business.
- Didn’t take proper pictures of my chest like the Photographic Standards of plastic surgeons brochure states he should have done.
- Caused permanent pain and chest muscle strength loss. Now four years after my surgery I still have very bad pain and I feel like I was tortured .
- Will potentially cost me over $50,000.00 to try to fix botched job. Expert dual board certified plastic surgeon Dr. Trevor M Born confirmed that my botched chest is likely permanent and the probability of correcting the damage is very low. The cost of trying to correct the damage with fat grafting will be in excess of $20,000.00 and I will likely need several fat grafting sessions. Each session could possibly cost me $10,000.00 dollars.
I didn’t fork over nearly $4000 to a general surgeon, I chose a plastic surgeon because there supposed to be meticulous, but felt that I got treated worse than an animal would have under the care of a veterinary surgeon. I can’t believe I let such a careless unprofessional piece of shit scumbag disfigure me.
All this information and so much more was sent to the College of Physician and Surgeons of Ontario, so you would think they would have done something about it, but I read that the CPSO are paid $2000 a year from the bad doctors they are supposed to protect you from. Once you sign the consent form a plastic surgeon can pretty much make you look like a 3rd degree burn victim and the CPSO will likely let him/her get away with it. If you don’t believe me, click here to read all the negative reviews.
Oh, you’re probably wondering what about the nurses, they saw what happened, won’t they have your back and go up against the doctor and possibly risk losing his/her job? Read the National Post story at the link below and tell me if you still think that. It’s no wonder why it’s taking an eternity to get cameras into operating rooms.
“As long as the public doesn’t realize that one in 13 people coming into the hospital will experience some kind of adverse event — and that’s the conservative estimate — then there isn’t any pressure to say, ‘Listen, fix these damn things.’
“Medical errors have become increasingly common. Out of fear of legal consequences, many doctors choose to hide their mistakes.
► More than 1 out of 10 patients are harmed over the course of their medical care. *
► Medical errors result in 250,000 deaths each year. *
► More than 7 out of 10 doctors say they’d admit little or nothing if they made a medical error, and most say they wouldn’t even apologize. *
That means we’ll never know precisely how often doctors make mistakes, because many if not most of them will hide it if they can. Or best case, “admit little.” Yikes. Back to your story.”
I tried to sue him but it is almost impossible in Canada to win as doctors are protected by the CMPA a tax funded organization that covers all legal expenses a doctor will incur when patients sue. The only time you truly have rights in Canada is if you can afford them or have a lawyer work on a contingency basis for you, which 99.9% of lawyers will not do unless the damages exceed $200,000.00 dollars and up usually. This idiot probably doesn’t know that writing fake reviews and erasing negative reviews is illegal and punishable under Section 74.02 of the Competition Act and I will be reporting him to competitionbureau.gc.ca. Hopefully he will find out the hard way by losing what he values most (money) as fines can go up as high as $10,000,000.00 for first time occurrence by a corporation. If any of his former patients are reading this and feel that they have been misled by him please go here http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/frm-eng/GH%C3%89T-7TDNA5 and make your complaint heard. I have a strong feeling that it’s not just me that he botched as I located two pictures of his prior patients.
The woman’s breasts above look like there going to explode there is noticeable asymmetry to the man chest here. Pictures were copied from his old website called cosmeticsurgerytoronto.com. Best advice I can give to people is record every conversation you have with your plastic surgeon on your cell phone and make sure the entire surgical plan is written on paper and signed by the surgeon. Do this during your consultation in his office and do not wait to do this on the day you have your surgery. I believe it is best to always choose a surgeon that is a member of the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons, this insures your surgeon has gone through the intensive training required to perform cosmetic and reconstructive surgery.
This is the best I can do is warn the public of the horrors this doctor has caused me. He comes of as charming, but I felt this was all an act. This Doctor in my opinion is a full blown psychopath. Like Dr. Jordan Peterson a clinical psychologist stated in the video embedded below is a psychopath will always test to see how far he can get with someone and if the person does not object to the obvious clues then he will see the person deserving of the pain he will soon encounter by his hands. Because I was nervous in the operating room and hesitant to speak out and didn’t listen to my six sense I believe Dr. Robert Backstein saw me as dumb easy prey and his true evil hidden predatory character was what he unleashed on me that day. I caution people and truly feel that this doctor is a malicious immature freak who wants to bring chaos into people’s life. Like the other reviewer wrote on Google business which mysteriously has disappeared “if you could see what he has done to me you would never hire him, NEVER.
Parts of the video of particular interest are at 0:26, 0:55 and 4:29.