Lisa Marie Presley's Cause of Death Sparks Stark Warning on Ozempic, Weight Loss From 'Botched' Star Doctor

Dr. Terry Dubrow is giving his thoughts.

By Andrew Roberts

Lisa Marie Presley's passing due to a bowel obstruction stemming from her weight loss procedure raised a lot of questions for those who have undergone similar surgeries or treatments in the past. Dr. Terry Dubrow from Botched spoke with TMZ on Friday and detailed some of the details.

"I have read Lisa Marie's autopsy report. She had the most advanced kind," Dubrow told the outlet about Presley's surgical procedure. "They made a new connection between her stomach and her intestines, and the most common complication when you go inside the abdomen and do that kind of surgery is that scar tissue forms.

"Occasionally, any time in the future when you've had this type of bypass bariatric surgery, those adhesions can block parts of the small intestine, called a small bowel obstruction," he continued, before dropping a bombshell about how the intestines can die from strangulation. "What's really scary, is 915 centimeters, which means 30 feet of her small intestines had died before she made it to the hospital."

TMZ noted that Dubrow didn't say Ozempic played any part in Presley's death, but with it in the headlines and the dangers of sudden weight loss, there are plenty of avenues to be informed about. Other doctors weighed in after the cause of death news broke on Thursday. Dr. Marina Kurian at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery spoke with NBC News on the health risks and stressed that it was still a relatively safe procedure.

"It's a terrible tragedy what happened to her and to her family, but in general, bariatric surgery is exceedingly safe," Kurian said. "The risks of this type of thing occurring are very low."

Dr. Ali Aminian, the director of the Bariatric Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, added that a low percentage of patients with bariatric surgery have complications and malnutrition tops that list. "We've learned how to align the bowel better, how to connect the bowel better together, decrease the risk of scar formation," he said. "The way that we do gastric bypass now in 2023 is totally different than the way that we did the procedure 10 years ago, so we've learned how to do a better procedure, which is much safer now."

Presley had been complaining about abdominal pain in the month before her passing. Her autopsy concluded she had "therapeutic levels" of oxycodone in her blood with other substances, but none of it contributed to her death. "I do think that sometimes opioids can mask some of the symptoms," Kurian said. "The message really is that if you're having abdominal pain, and you've had any kind of abdominal surgery, you really should be evaluated for that."

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