BUENOS AIRES (EFE) -- Model Solange Magnano, a former Miss Argentina, died of a pulmonary embolism after undergoing cosmetic surgery in Buenos Aires, the local press reported Monday.

Magnano, 38, traveled on Thursday from her home in the central province of Cordoba to the Argentine capital to have a cosmetic operation.

While she was being treated at a private clinic, the model, who had 8-year-old twin boys, suffered a blood clot in the lungs that required her to be taken to the hospital, where she died on Sunday.

Magnano had been Miss Argentina in 1994 and currently was working for designer Roberto Piazza while she was managing a modeling school that she had opened two years ago in San Francisco, Cordoba.

The surgical procedure Magnano was undergoing intended to improve the shape of her buttocks "has its risks, because it is not a procedure that is scientifically guaranteed," warned the president of the Plastic, Cosmetic and Reparatory Surgery Society of Argentina, Juan Carlos Seiler, in the daily Clarin.

In recent years, the phenomenon of so-called "surgical tourism" has been growing in Argentina, and many women travel to the country to undergo plastic surgery, which are generally much less expensive than in other places.

In August, a 43-year-old Chilean woman died in the western Argentine province of Mendoza, where she had gone to have three cosmetic operations.

Meanwhile, the Argentine councilwoman for the province of Chaco, Maria Alejandra Carballeira, has been in a coma since July 2008 after undergoing liposuction.

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