The black area inside the lip is necrosis
The beautician who injected this patient was confident in her injectable skills and her ability to sort out any complications. This dream was sold to her by a training academy run by a non-medic.
Unfortunately, the reality was very different from what she was promised on her courses.
After blocking the patient’s superior labial artery (the one which supplies blood to the top lip), she attempted to administer an emergency dissolving product according to her training protocol – it failed. From that moment it was down to the patient to sort out her own emergency care.
The patient attempted to go to A&E, where she was told that there is absolutely nothing they can do as they are not trained to deal with aesthetic complications and they don’t have the dissolving product.
The black area above the lip is impending necrosis
We made it this time, and on this occasion, the lip recovered without any residual damage, but I wouldn’t advise anybody to count on finding an experienced injector/ prescriber in the middle of the night as a backup.
We must not blame patients for choosing the wrong injectors.
Often incompetent practitioners have misleading titles such as “Advanced aesthetic practitioner”, “Level 7”, “Harley street trained” etc. No wonder people get confused.
If we need surgical intervention in the hospital, it’s not our responsibility to make sure that the operation will be performed by senior medics and not by the domestic or catering staff.
We rely on hospital regulations, to guarantee our safety. We would hope that similar measures would be put in place in the medical aesthetic industry, but unfortunately, that’s not currently the case.
Just be careful.
Kind regards,
Natalia