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LOS ANGELES - The plastic surgeon who operated on rap star Kanye West's mother before she died has gone public about the case, saying nothing had gone wrong during the surgery.
In his most detailed comments on the case, Dr. Jan Adams told The Los Angeles Times that everything went fine on November 9 when he performed a breast reduction, tummy tuck and liposuction on 58-year-old Donda West.
He said West likely succumbed to a heart attack, pulmonary embolism or accidental overdose of drugs prescribed to her for pain after the procedure.
"When she left this office, there was no problem whatsoever," said Adams, who was also due to appear on TV show Larry King Live today.
West, a former university professor and mother of the Grammy-winning rapper, died on November 10 at a Los Angeles-area hospital.
Kanye West canceled all appointments in the week after her death but has since restarted his European tour. At a concert in Paris on Saturday where he broke down in tears as he was about to sing his track Hey Mama and he had to leave the stage for a while. Onstage in Brussels, Belgium this week Kanye spoke about the death of his mother and why he was continuing with his tour. Click here to watch a clip of his speech.
Kanye is due to start a UK tour in London this Thursday.
Beverly Hills-based Adams said there was a "small list of possibilities" that could have resulted in West's death and he thinks he knows why she died but would not comment until after an official inquiry was completed.
"I believe I know exactly what happened to her, but I will not comment on it until I see the final report," he said.
The Los Angeles County coroner's office completed a preliminary autopsy report last week and said West may have died from possible complications from surgery. It has opened an investigation into the death.
Adams said a drug overdose was a possibility because he prescribed Vicodin to West to combat any pain after the procedures she underwent.
But the newspaper said Adams later claimed that he wasn't speculating about West's case specifically but about a hypothetical patient with similar problems.
Donda West, who raised her son in a middle-class Chicago suburb after splitting with her husband, helped manage her son's businesses and educational foundation after retiring in 2004 from teaching English at Chicago State University.
In May, she published a book titled Raising Kanye: Life Lessons from the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar.
Before West's death, Adams was a high-profile surgeon who was host of his own plastic surgery show on the Discovery Health channel and appeared on numerous TV talk shows. His show has been taken off air but Discovery Health did not return calls for more details.
- REUTERS
