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A man has died after having a heart attack on the operating table during a hair transplant.

Rafael Bolado Marino died moments after receiving anaesthesia at the Dermitek clinic in the city of Bilbao, Spain.

Mr Marino, from Maliano, had travelled to Bilbao to undergo the procedure - similar to the one favoured by football star Wayne Rooney.

The 39-year-old was given a local anaesthetic - by unnamed surgeons, according to reports - just before his transplant and suffered a heart attack shortly afterwards.

He later died in hospital.

The Dermitek clinic, which has been performing hair transplant surgeries for more than five years, told local media that it was "not known if the heart attack was caused by the anaesthetic or not".

The clinic said local anaesthetic like Mr Marino’s were administered "5,000 times a day".

According to the centre, the doctors who participated in the hair implant process that went wrong have been very "affected as this had never happened before".

Maria del Carmen Adan, a member of the Patient Defenders Association, has sent a letter to prosecutors asking for the incident to be considered a crime.

She says his death could have been caused by negligence regarding the amount of anaesthetic or because of the lack of control in the pre-operation process.

The letter said that the clinic is selling this intervention as harmless, but that could be "false advertising" as there is "no explanation of the serious consequences that could happen".

It is unclear if a criminal investigation has been opened.