Woman’s face inflated like a balloon after lip filler dissolved
She said that 'risking her life' isn't worth getting filler again.
A young woman was left unrecognisable after a severe reaction to getting her lip filler dissolved caused her face to inflate like a balloon.
Shaunna Harris, 24, thought she was going to die after her throat closed up when given the shot by her aesthetician.
The radiographer from Bridgend, Wales, got her first 0.5ml of lip filler when she was 18, and an additional 1ml at 22.
However, she had decided to get her existing filler dissolved before topping up with another 1ml.
She said: ‘I went to have my lip filler dissolved and I didn’t think anything of it because I’d had lip filler put in in the past and it was all fine.’
The complications began when the 1ml she wanted to dissolve had ‘migrated’.
She said: ‘Straight away I knew something wasn’t right. She gave me the dissolver and my lips just blew up.
‘I asked the aesthetician if it was normal and she said ‘yeah people’s lips do tend to swell up’ but it didn’t look normal.
‘Then I started to get hives all over my eyelids in the next five minutes, which were really itchy and painful.
‘Then within 10 minutes, my face was all blown up and swollen. I couldn’t see out of my eyes.
‘My face was completely blown up and swollen so [the aesthetician] took my car and drove me to A&E. I looked unrecognisable.’
Shaunna said that as she was in the car to A&E she was ‘struggling to breathe’ and thought she was going to die.
She said: ‘My body was covered in hives. I felt like my skin was burning.
‘As soon as I got in, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t answer their questions because I couldn’t breathe. All the nurses were worried.
‘When they gave me the adrenaline, it opened up my airways and my breathing improved.
‘But my face was swollen for days after. I was really worried my face wouldn’t go down. I didn’t go out the house for three days.’
Shaunna’s reaction to getting her lip filler dissolved was due to an allergic reaction to hyaluronidase, doctors said.
Hyaluronidase is a soluble protein enzyme, which is often used by aestheticians to break down the hyaluronic acid found in lip filler.
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