One of
the social media influencer in Indonesia, who is also a beauty and trend icon
had gotten herself into trouble few months ago. The problem was, she’s
endorsing a breast enhancer product that required self-injection on the breast.
Yes, you read that right. She was promoting some kind of crazy DIY invasive medical treatment and wihtout any hestation said, "This is a safe and risk-free product!"
The product was sold online and the seller would give you the syringe as
well as the ‘serum’ once you order it. As terrifying as it might be, many of
her followers attracted to this kind of ‘beauty product’. I didn’t know about
this until a doctor angrily post her disagreement on social media. She
wrote ‘What on earth is wrong with this socmed influencer?? Doing this kind of
‘endorse’!! There’s a limit for endorsing, not selling the drug as well as the
syringe!! Please help me report her. This is dangerous!’ Yes, as a doctor I can
understand her anger. It’s like looking at a little kid running with a pair of
scissors. When I saw the post I also thought “Safe and risk-free breast
enchancer?? Now wait the hell a minute!”
From what I heard, the ‘serum’
contains estradiol – synthetic hormones they used for hormone replacement
therapy ... okay now hormone replacement therapy isn't a simple procedure. It needs several examinations before it even start, in order to avoid long-term risks such as cancer. Second of all, even though they claimed that it contains 'estradiol', how could we be sure that it's real?
Many people agreed with the doctor, because they also knew the danger. However, some of the social media influencer's devoted follower got angry at the doctor. "If you don't like what she promote, then simply don't buy the product! You're just jealous because nobody wants to endorse you!" is one of the backlash posted.
Injecting
questionable substance into one’s body has a lot of risks. The method itself
isn’t something DIY. Without knowing anatomy, a mistake such as hitting a major
artery or vein might happen.
You see
that’s the anatomy of the breast I got from my Netter Atlas of Anatomy. If the
substance enters the blood vessel, it could cause complications such as
embolism (blockade of blood vessel) on the lung or the heart also there’s risks
for infections entering your blood vessels directly. If the process isn’t
sterile. If the infection was localized and formed an abscess (swelling area
filled with puss) for me that is considered ‘light’ if the treatment ‘only’
required puss drainage.
The
infection could also go through the blood vessel and reach the heart, thus
creating infections on the heart called endocarditis. It’s not a ‘light’
problem, to put it mildly. If one did not realize the symptoms, untreated
endocarditis could cause death within weeks and even days. The treatment of
endocarditis required intra-venous antibiotic and sometimes surgery if the
heart structure (mostly the valves) damaged due to the infections. If the
valves could not be saved, a replacement valves might be used because of
damages as seen below :
Anaphylactic
shock is one of the direct-fatal risks that could happen. It’s a severe alergic
reaction, when your body doesn’t agree with the susbtance enters your body and
releasing susbtance to fight it. The susbtance causes fatal symptoms such as
dilatation of the blood vessels (that leads to blood vessel drop), increase of
heart rate, spasm in coronary (heart) blod vessels, swelling of throat/tongue/lips (causing
airway blockade), confusion (makes you can’t think of what to do) and loss of
consicousness. This reaction happens within minutes and need immediate emergency
treatment otherwise the various organ system in your body will fail within
short time.
Epinephrine
injection – an emergency injection that could be used during anaphylactic
episodes – could be bought with official prescription from a doctor, proper
indication as well as clear instruction on how to use it. The ‘online
clinic/shop/etc’ who sell the ‘beauty injection’ obviously doesn’t consider it
because the seller might not be aware of the risks.
There
are plenty of reports on unofficial beauty treatment gone wrong ... but that’s
just the tip of the iceberg. Many people do not report such incident because
they still think that having body modification is a ‘guilty pleasure’,
something they do to feel good but it’s a shame if anyone knows about it. So if
something goes wrong, the shame beats the willing to get better. Thus, the
unreported incidents.
Sadly,
this is not the first time I heard questionable ‘beauty therapy’. When I just
graduated, I work at some clinics and once I encountered a patient who wanted
me to inject this ‘skin whitening serum’. When I refused, she was told me ‘The
person from other clinic injected this before to me, doc! And it’s safe!’ I
told explained to her that we could not inject susbtance the patients got by
themselves, without any official referal letters from the hospital (I explained
about patients with Hepatitis B and AIDS who sometimes got their injection
medication at the clinic) as well as the safety guarantee of the substance (And
‘I bought this at official online clinic from Thailand’ is not what I meant). She
finally left the clinic,looking upset.
What
most people don’t understand is, we doctors are taking a lot of precautions
when it comes to invasive treatments. We do not enjoy ‘making things harder’
for our patients and no, we’re not ‘jealous of the social media influencer
because they got endorsement and we’re not’. Trust me, if a (sane) medical care
giver were offered endorsement on ‘DIY invasive medical treatment’ they will
immediately say ‘no’ as well as reporting the dangerous offer to the
authority.
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