In their fight against their own bodies some people seek to reverse the ageing process
or enhance or reduce what they already have.
The more common surgeries are removing excess fat, enlarging the breasts, filling out the
lips, reshaping the nose and rejuvenating the face.
You might not have heard of “dimpleplasty”, adding permanent dimples to the face.
Or what about “otoplasty”?
This is the surgery that pulls the ears closer to the head.
For the most part such surgeries are safe, but there is always the risk of infections,
anesthesia complications, nerve damage or scarring.
Sometimes the procedure just doesn’t exactly go to plan and the person gets something they
didn’t bargain for.
Today we’ll look at the darker side of getting ‘work done’, in this episode of the Infographics
Show, Why People Are Dying from Brazilian Butt Lift Surgery.
First of all, for those of you not fluent in the field of augmenting, diminishing and
styling parts of the body, let’s see exactly what butt lift surgery is.
You don’t generally go into a clinic and ask for a butt lift, it sounds rather crude.
Instead, you ask for buttock enhancement.
This might be reducing the size of the posterior; it might be re-shaping the backside, making
it firmer or giving it more attractive contours.
It seems many people are not keen on what nature gave them, or perhaps not enough exercise
and too many soft drinks have helped create a behind someone is far from proud of owning.
When we are talking buttock augmentation much of the time we are referring to adding more
volume to the backside and giving it a better shape.
Sometimes called the “Brazilian Butt Lift”, the procedure often involves taking a person’s
own body fat and adding it to the buttocks.
This usually means taking fat from what is called a “donor area”, which is often
either the love handles, the thighs or the stomach.
But it could also mean putting synthetic implants into the backside, something that carries
more risks and is very rare in the USA.
What kind of people go for such a surgery?
One plastic surgery website tells us these people are worried their butt is too small,
feel their butt isn’t round enough or that one side is bigger than the other; they have
an asymmetrical posterior.
It’s also advised that if you opt for this surgery that you should be in good health,
not smoke, and it’s better if you’re committed to living a healthy life.
What about the cost?
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons tells us that in 2017 the average cost of a butt
lift was $5,113.
The average cost of butt enhancement with fat grafting augmentation was $4,096 and the
average cost of getting butt implants was $4,884.
It goes without saying that if you opt for the cheapest butt surgery out there you might
be putting yourself at risk.
People are asked to check if their surgeon is qualified, experienced and certified.
In the U.S. this might be easy, but in some other countries there might be some surgeries
that don’t exactly meet U.S. standards.
You’ll usually be asked to sign a consent form to acknowledge you know what the surgery
consists of and what risks there might be.
For instance, there is always a risk someone might not deal well with the anesthetic.
As we write this there is news of a 72-year-old Thai woman who apparently died after having
an allergic reaction to the anesthetic in a Bangkok plastic surgery clinic.
But the list of complications of butt surgery is a long one.
These include infections, bleeding, pain, poor healing, fat necrosis, deep vein thrombosis,
cardiac and pulmonary complications, accumulation of fluid, asymmetry of butt, numbness, scarring,
skin loss and more.
That’s pretty scary, so now is the right time to tell you about when butt lift surgery
went very wrong, when the complication was the worst on the list: Death.
One source tells us that Brazilian butt lift surgeries in the U.S. have been getting more
common over the past five years.
It also tells us, “The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the Brazilian butt lift
(BBL) has the highest rate of death of all aesthetic procedures.”
Why is that?
We are told that injecting fat into the buttocks is not exactly the safest of procedures.
This is because the fat is injected into the muscle, not just other fat.
If it goes into the muscle it has more chance of staying in place.
But this is where the problem lies.
Apparently, injecting fat into muscle can lead to complications if not done correctly.
What can happen is something called fat embolism, which means the fat gets into the bloodstream
and blocks a vessel.
This could mean blocking oxygen getting to your lungs or to the brain, and that could
mean game over for the patient.
But how dangerous is it really?
The Aesthetic Surgery Education and Research Foundation (ASERF) set out in 2017 to find
out the answer to that.
It interviewed 4,843 plastic surgeons globally and also looked at data when possible.
692 surgeons responded to the survey and in all reported 198,857 cases of gluteal fat
grafting.
ASERF wrote, “Over their careers, surgeons reported 32 fatalities from pulmonary fat
emboli as well as 103 nonfatal pulmonary fat emboli.
Three percent of respondents experienced a patient fatality and 7% of respondents reported
at least one pulmonary fat embolism in a patient over their careers.”
With the help of the Association for the Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgical Facilities in the USA,
more data was collected only relating to the U.S.
The bad news was that this data revealed that over 5 years, 25 people in the U.S. died as
a result of having that surgery.
The conclusion of the research was stark: “Despite the growing popularity of gluteal
fat grafting, significantly higher mortality rates appear to be associated with gluteal
fat grafting than with any other aesthetic surgical procedure.”
Now let’s put some faces to the unsettling news of this being a risky surgery to have.
We are told that in 2016 a U.S. mother of two died after liposuction and butt enhancement
surgery went wrong.
It was reported that after being injected with fat some of the fat particles clogged
her arteries and the result was her lungs and heart failing to function.
It was reported by medical examiners that she had a heart defect, but indeed fat particles
had entered her bloodstream.
Only recently in Brazil, perhaps the home of the Brazilian butt lift, a doctor who went
by the name of 'Dr Bumbum' was charged with murder after a surgery didn’t go to plan.
He’d actually done the procedure not in a clinic but in his apartment, reported The
Guardian newspaper.
A woman, aged 46, died just hours after having the surgery.
Not only was the doctor charged with homicide, but also his domestic employee, his girlfriend,
mother, his girlfriend and his secretary.
The doctor was popular, too, with 600,000 followers on Instagram and 44,000 on Facebook.
He’d use those platforms to post before and after photos, when of course things turned
out good.
In the case of the dead woman, he’d used a substance called Poly (methyl methacrylate),
or PMMA as a filler, although the Brazilian Plastic Surgery Society has issued warnings
about using this.
Only a week before we write this, the BBC reported that a second British woman had died
in 2018 after getting the butt surgery.
It writes that in spite of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons saying this
is one risky surgery, it is celebrities that have made it popular.
A doctor talking to the BBC estimated that about one in 3,000 people die when receiving
this treatment, which according to the website Injury Facts, is about the same odds a person
has of choking to death on food in their lifetime.
The first of the deaths of the British women receiving butt lift surgery in 2018 happened
in Turkey.
The beautician from Leeds in the north of England had travelled to a place that apparently
had celebrity clientele.
She paid around $3,900 for the procedure.
The mother of three didn’t make it home and according to her partner he was still
waiting for answers as to how exactly she died.
Not much was said about the second British woman, only that she was in her 20s and that
an investigation was ongoing.
So, let’s say you are not one of the people that died.
Does it mean you are home-free?
Not according to reports.
There might be significant trauma to come.
In 2018, a 23-year-old woman from Wales said she had also skipped over to Turkey to get
her butt done.
She didn’t die, but said months after the surgery holes had formed in her backside and
it was leaking.
“I couldn't walk properly for ages,” she told the BBC, adding that the leaking fat
would make a mess of her clothes.
She said it smelled bad and she had to bandage her butt all the time.
“I honestly wish I could go back.
I was happy with my body before.
And now I paid a stupid amount of money to look like this,” she told the BBC.
Another woman also came forward saying she had gone over to Turkey for the same surgery
as it was cheap over there.
She ended up with a high fever when she got home and the surgeon in Turkey she said stopped
replying to her emails and text messages.
She then had to be admitted to a hospital and two years later still had pains in her
backside.
If you want to give yourself a shock just look at pictures online of when butt lift
surgery, often with implants, turned bad.
Not only is the butt a mess with holes all over it, but some of those photos look monstrous,
as if the butts were fashioned with Plasticine by a kid that was very bad at modelling.
It is unfortunate that some people are so insecure of their behind that they take such
a risk.
Perhaps we are not all born to be able to take the perfect “Belfie”.
A Consultant Plastic and Cosmetic Surgeon at The Plastic Surgery Group told the British
media that there are sometimes complications but often the surgeons just get it wrong.
He said if you must get it, avoid fillers and choose your surgeon wisely.
If you don’t choose wisely you could end up looking much worse than before and as you
know, you could die.
Never go for the cheap option.
After hearing this, would you be up for some butt enhancement surgery?
Do you think it’s as risky as it seems, or do you think the media has blown this out
of proportion?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show Most Painful Things A Person Can Experience.
Thanks for watching, and as always, please don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.