Six women from Essex County, New Jersey were hospitalized after getting black market butt enhancement procedures in which they were injected with the kind of non-medical grade silicone you can buy at the hardware store. I’ve read about similar practices in drag queen communities as well. I’d imagine that DIY cosmetic surgery, like medical tourism, will become more “mainstream.” It’s not clear yet if the six new cases are related. From NJ.com:
Different from medical-grade silicone, the substance used in the botched procedures was believed to be a diluted version of nonmedical-grade silicone.
“The same stuff you use to put caulk around the bathtub,” said Steven M. Marcus, executive and medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, who learned about the bizarre procedures through a committee he sits on that monitors outbreaks in the metropolitan area.
“What a tragedy,” said Gregory Borah, chief of plastic surgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.
Using over-the-counter silicone can cause abscesses that he said resemble “a big zit”…A plastic surgeon doing buttocks augmentation would make an incision to develop a pocket underneath the muscle and shape the buttocks with inert medical-grade silicone, Borah said. He noted it is a relatively uncommon procedure in most practices and that he has done only two in his 24-year career.
By the time he tells patients of the potential risks – from anesthesia, scarring and silicone shifting when patients sit down – they often change their minds.
“Black-market cosmetic surgeries hospitalize six N.J. women”