Six New Jersey Women get Industrial Silicone Injections...and big problems.

Here's a story from CBS News - it belongs in the "You've got to be kidding me " file. These women had buttock injections from a bogus MD in a hotel room. With bathroom-type silicone caulking. In large volumes. This story did not end well.

Astute (no pun intended) readers of this blog should recognize several "red-flags" already.....


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Women Hospitalized After Fake Silicone Injections: 6 Individuals Thought They Were Improving Their Curves But Ended Up Getting Tumor-Like Infections Instead


J-Lo and Kim Kardashian have curves women would kill for. This may have been the shapely image six New Jersey women were trying to achieve when they got injections from bogus medical providers to enhance their behinds, but instead ended up in hospitals with severe tumor-like infections.

"The product used was, first of all, not manufactured with the intention to inject into the body," Dr. Steven Marcus of NJ Poison Control told CBS station WCBS-TV.

Health officials believe bathroom caulk may have been used in the injections. It's made from silicone and used to seal cracks in tubs and tiles in bathrooms.

Poison control officials said the women were lucky to be alive. "You could inject this into a vein, and then that substance floating in your bloodstream could damage your heart, your brain, you could have a stroke from it," Marcus said.

The women, five of them from Essex County, apparently got the injections in motel and hotel rooms. The Board of Medical Examiners was investigating to see if they all got it from the same unlicensed provider.

"I was thinking about doing that," for a more plump buttocks, said Joan Sorbino of Newark, but she's thankful she didn't. "Very scary," she said.

"If you have somebody whose entire buttock is injected with this material, you occasionally will need to do a fairly radical incision as if it were a cancer," said Dr. Mark Granick, chief plastic surgeon at University Hospital. "Plastic surgeons don't inject large volumes of anything in anybody. It's just not safe. You can have a buttock implant put in. Some doctors will do that, and buttock implants are also well-tested and relatively safe, although they do have a separate set of complications," Granick said.

With any kind of procedure, you should always check with the American Society of Plastic Surgeons to make sure your surgeon is legitimate.

(Dr. Fiala's note: In addition, only FDA-approved, medical-grade products should ever be used for any kind of injection. In general, for buttock augmentation procedures, I recommend fat grafting techniques or appropriately designed and approved buttock implants.)

Experts say: Large volume buttock injections are dangerous

This press release is from our colleagues over at the PSP (Plastic Surgery Practice) website.
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The Physicians Coalition for Injectable Safety recently launched a campaign aimed at reminding consumers that no pharmaceutical filler or injected device is presently FDA-approved for large volume injection to the buttocks.

The popularity and hype surrounding buttock augmentation and other large-volume body enhancing injections on blog sites like RealSelf.com and outside U.S. borders is an alarming and potentially deadly trend, cautions the Physicians Coalition for Injectable Safety. Permanent fillers such as polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), silicone, and polyacrylimide used in augmenting buttocks and hips can not only result in disfigurement but have resulted in death and serious injuries both in the U.S. and abroad.

The recent death of a woman in Argentina following buttock augmentation was not a result of plastic surgery," says Brazilian plastic surgeon Joao Carlos Sampaio Goes, MD, PhD, and past president of the International Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. It (was) the result of a dangerous practice with fillers that are not intended to be used in this way." Buttock augmentation is a hot topic in the media and a popular procedure of surgical tourism," often performed in countries where standards are less stringent.

Recent headlines of death in the U.S. include cases in Tampa, Florida where an unlicensed, non--medical provider allegedly injected two women with a homemade combination of industrial silicone oil and saline to augment or enhance the shape of their buttocks, and a woman in the Bronx who died after illegal silicone injections resulted in the substance migrating to (traveling) her lungs, producing respiratory failure."