For some, cost of cosmetic surgery is personal health.

Byline: Kirsten Scharnberg

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. _ There are few cities in America where the marvels of plastic surgery are more on display than this one. The beaches and bars are walking, breathing billboards for eye jobs and nose jobs, tummy tucks and thigh tucks, new breasts and new chins and feet sculpted to fit better into shoes with unnaturally pointy toes.

But the story of cosmetic surgery here, as in much of America, is not as simple as entering a clinic feeling imperfect and leaving looking beautiful.

In Florida, a state that has been touted as a national example for its regulations on plastic surgery, the statistics clearly illustrate how risky these procedures can be.

In less than two years at least eight people have died here, including a 72-year-old retired postal worker who saved for years to pay for liposuction and a well-known real estate agent who never emerged from a coma after a face-lift.

At one wildly popular clinic, five people have died after surgeries since 1997, and dozens of multimillion-dollar malpractice lawsuits have been filed.

And then there are the scores of profoundly botched jobs: the woman whose doctor went ahead with implants after discovering a potentially cancerous lump in one breast; the patient who ended up a quadriplegic after suffering a heart attack during a face-lift; the homemaker whose bowel was pierced during liposuction who ended up with an infection so severe that her legs had to be amputated.

"I don't think there is another place in the country where as much surgery is going on _ or where as many mistakes are being made and lawsuits are being filed," said Stuart Ratzan, a Miami attorney who specializes in medical malpractice cases.

That's not to say that other states don't have problems. New York and California _ also bastions of plastic beauty _ have recently seen some high-profile plastic surgeries go wrong.

Manhattan socialite Olivia Goldsmith, who wrote the novel "The First Wives Club" and once mocked those who would go to such…