An Ohio plastic surgeon known as “Dr. Roxy” who livestreamed her procedures on TikTok has been permanently banned from practicing medicine after the state’s medical board found she injured patients in front of hundreds of thousands of live viewers.
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On Wednesday the State Medical Board of Ohio voted to permanently revoke Dr. Katharine Roxanne Grawe’s (@doctorrroxy on TikTok) based on her failure to meet standards of care.
The board had originally decided to suspend Grawe’s license in November on claims that she neglected her patients as she live-streamed their procedures, spoke into a camera and answered viewer questions from her more than 825,000 TikTok followers.
According to the medical board, at least three of Grawe’s patients have suffered severe complications, including infections, a perforated intestine and loss of brain function, from being operated on at her practice in Powell, Ohio.
“I strongly recommend that there never be a Dr. Roxy or patient one, two or three — and protect the people of the state of Ohio from this reckless physician,” board member Dr. Jonathan Feibel told a Columbus, Ohio NBC affiliate.
Grawe, who had been a practicing plastic surgeon in the Columbus area since 2010, had received warnings from the board as early as 2018 over possible privacy and ethics violations, according to a previous board suspension notice.
During her hearing Wednesday, Grawe said she filmed the videos in the operating room “to make people smile in a world that is negative and difficult to navigate,” according to NBC.
Grawe told the Washington Post Thursday that she was “obviously devastated” over the board’s decision, and accused the medical board of “bullying” her during this week’s hearing.
“Nobody wants a complication, and we never want things to go poorly, but any complications that happened with me were not because I was not paying attention,” Grawe told the Washington Post. “My whole goal in life is to give these people confidence and make them more beautiful. And, unfortunately, they suffered these complications, and I feel very sad for them. I would never want anything bad to happen to them.”
