Jennifer Garza

Jennifer Garza is a physician at the Valley Pediatrics in McAllen, Texas. In 2011 she performed a circumcision on a 4 year old child, leading to such severe complications that the child pleaded to "just cut it off and (he) can be a girl". .

On August 27th of 2012 the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) presented a new Policy Statement on Circumcision and Technical Report stating that "the benefits outweigh the risks", yet when it comes a complications like this one, the technical report states that "Financial costs of care, emotional tolls, or the need for future corrective surgery (with the attendant anesthetic risks, family stress, and expense) are unknown".

Valley Pediatric Surgical Specialist

"The goal of Valley Pediatric Surgical Specialists is to provide the highest quality pediatric surgery in the most caring and efficient manner possible."

"We are on staff at all medical center hospitals, as well as most community hospitals in the greater Houston area."

Valley Pediatric still offers circumcisions and Dr. Garza appears to be its only provider.

Jennifer Garza

A graduate of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Dr. Garza completed her residencies of general surgery at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut, a program affiliated with Yale University School of Medicine, as well as St. Louis University Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri where she was also Administrative Chief Resident. Dr. Garza did two years of research at Children’s Hospital Boston (Harvard), where she participated in the development of a new technique for bowel lengthening and helped develop a new formulation for feeding children by vein who are not able to eat by mouth. Most recently, she completed her pediatric surgery fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City.

Botched circumcision

Rafael and Vanessa Deleon sued Dr. Jennifer J. Garza, of McAllen, in Hidalgo County Court. They claim that after a 90 minutes surgery, Dr. Garza told them there was some bleeding but it had stopped, but then a nurse told Garza that the boy was still bleeding, and he was taken to surgery a second time. Garza then told the parents that she stopped the bleeding using cauterization.

The child stayed overnight at the hospital. The parents noticed his penis oozed blood every time he urinated.

The following day they were released, and over the next days the parents noticed that when the child urinated there were two streams. He also kept bleeding.

The referring doctor and a third doctor examined the child and were unable to explain the cause of the second stream. In the following days the child continued to be in pain while urinating, refusing to drink anything, blaming the parents for his pain and asking to just have his penis cut off so he can be a girl. The parents had to change the sheets every night due to blood stains.

A week after the procedure, the parents took the child to the emergency room at Rio Grande Regional Hospital where Dr. Christopher Bristow told them "that the plaintiff's penis looked over cauterized." A urologist saw the child and he was prescribed morphine to sleep.

Later after urinating he had a stream of blood running on his leg. He was taken to another emergency room.

Five days later, a pediatric urologist told them that the child's urethra is damaged. The circumcision surgery created fistulas - holes in the child's penis. He told them that the child will need reconstructive surgery to repair the fistulas.

On or about September 23, 2011, the child underwent reconstructive surgery to close the fistulas (holes) on his penis. The doctor told the family that he closed the holes; however he may need more surgeries in the future.

The family seeks punitive damages for medical negligence, deceptive trade, breach of warranty and misrepresentation.