I originally chose Tampa Surgical Arts because of the natural looking results displayed on their social media. During my consultation, Dr. Bedi told me that he was confident he would correct my contour imbalances and give me a “modest four-pack”. It would be a very costly procedure, but I assumed I was in good hands. Over two years and $20,000 later, my results were far from this. I am left with one of the fakest looking abdominal etch surgeries I’ve ever seen in my life and I am devastated. Within days after surgery, I noticed thick, boxy lines developing from chest to lower abdomen area, which began to get progressively darker and more noticeable over time. Even though I was still in the early process of healing, I could tell that my results were not at all what we discussed during the consultation. And all of the original problem areas and imbalances that I had were not fully corrected and still very much an issue. During my sixth week postop visit, the lines that had darkened were so obvious that it baffled me how the doctor didn’t address it immediately. only until I brought it up. Only after I brought it up, he told me that the dark lines could be treated with a $500 steroid cream, that “may or may not work”. Due to his lack of basic knowledge and care, I chose not to fill the script and hope for the best. Over a year later and fully healed, the terrible abdominal etch and problem areas were still there. And now causing me a great deal of mental and emotional anguish. I didn’t feel comfortable taking off my shirt in public, because people would stare and ask questions about my obvious surgical procedures. I did not want that kind of attention. It was getting to be very embarrassing to have to explain what happened to me and why I hadn’t considered a medical malpractice lawsuit yet. In a calm manner, I brought my concerns to Dr. Bedi and his team during and after each post-op appointment. He recommended a laser treatment that ultimately would not work and could have potentially caused more problems. He also stated the imbalances were due to my “anatomy” and were now all of a sudden impossible to correct. And his team even tried to sell me more surgical procedures. At this point, I lost all trust and faith in this practice as a whole. I was not going to come back. So I requested my surgical notes and decided to seek out other options to fix the poor work that has been done. Once I received and reviewed the documents, I realize that the notes did not align with the alleged procedures I had paid for. I attempted to get into communication with the office for some kind of explanation and have yet to receive correspondence up until now. Throughout this journey, I had hoped to maintain a level of discretion and privacy, but feeling ignored and disregarded, I have no choice but to go public with my experience, as it seems to hold no concern to Dr. Bedi and his team at Tampa Surgical Arts this point. It has been over 2 years, I’ve had to spend thousands more to attempt to fix botched surgery and undo the new insecurities caused because of it. I would not recommend this doctor, especially for people of color who risk development of hyperpigmentation or darkening to the skin, because they simply are not educated enough to handle it.
