Suppose you want to have your butt done and you have heard of a new product on the street… Such product supposedly requires minimal down time and you don’t need to have surgery. You contact an individual that you found online or through email and schedule an appointment. During you appointment you are told that the best way to increase the volume of your butt is by injecting silicone. The person gives you a quote for $2,000.00 and the procedure will be done in a hotel room without major anesthesia. All excited, you show up the day of the procedure. The provider starts injecting a liquid with no color or smell. Everything is going well and your butt starts having a better shape. There is minimal pain. All of a sudden, you lose consciousness and wake up in an emergency room. You can barely breathe, your heart is pounding rapidly, and after a while everything goes dark and the beep of your heart becomes silent. What a terrible situation!
Injecting silicone into the buttocks can cause what is called the silicone emboli syndrome. This is a condition where clots block the blood supply to the lungs preventing oxygen from getting into the blood stream and essentially you suffocate and can even die. This typically occurs within the first 72 hrs after silicone injection. There are two main ways of presenting this syndrome. First, the patient can be present with respiratory distress and low oxygen levels within the first 72 hrs. There is fever, chest pain, cough, vomiting blood, and shortness of breath. Other patients present an altered mental status, including coma. If this is the case, your chances of dying is 100%.
The silicone emboli syndrome is the most serious complication of buttock augmentation with silicone. I don’t recommend injecting this product in the buttock area. If you survive this injection, most likely you will have additional problems in the future as discussed previously.