Botched lip fillers left woman with ‘rock hard blue lumps’ on her mouth

A woman was left with ‘huge blue lumps’ in her swollen lips after a filler injection went horribly wrong.

Sarah Naijjar, 34, paid £300 for the fillers after admiring the way they created pouts on other people.

But the dentist soon regretted her decision, after she was left with lumpy and swollen lips and had to pay another £700 to fix the damage.

She went for the procedure in 2016 after noticing her lips looked ‘deflated’ once she had turned 30.

It was such a traumatic experience that she then decided to train in facial aesthetics, so she could safely perform the procedure for others.

She said: ‘My lips swelled up after I had the filler injected, which I initially thought was normal – but after a week you could see all these huge blue lumps and they felt rock hard.

‘You could see them when I was talking. I was so self-conscious.’

She says since then she realises how widespread the problem is: ‘I get so many women coming in for corrective work after getting botched fillers, and they always say the same thing, ‘I went somewhere cheap.’ But you have to think, it’s cheap for a reason, and it ends up costing you far more to fix it.’

After her appointment – during which one millilitre of filler was injected into her lips – she experienced some swelling, which she assumed was normal.

A week later, though, it became clear that something had gone terribly wrong.

She explained: ‘My lips were very lumpy and uneven, so I went back to the injector who had done them, and they suggested that even more filler would even them out.

‘Looking back, I know that’s not right now, but at the time, I trusted what I was being told and just wanted it fixed.

‘So, I had another one millilitre injected – meaning I’d had two millilitres in just two weeks.

‘I woke up and my lips were more swollen than ever – literally about two centimetres in front of my face – and rock hard.

‘I had to go into work and my practice manager was really shocked, asking me what on earth had happened.’

With a family wedding approaching, Sarah had no choice but to find a dermatologist who could help reverse the damage.

After researching extensively, she found a specialist who was able to inject her with hyaluronidase – a family of enzymes that can break down hyaluronic acid, the ingredient used in most lip fillers.

‘That cost me £700 – more than double what I’d paid for the original fillers,” she said. “I did have a slight allergic reaction to the hyaluronidase and my mouth swelled, but I was given antihistamines.

‘I was under review for two days after that and, thankfully, my lips began returning to normal.’

Now, after becoming officially trained and qualified to perform injectable filler procedures, she works at The Dental Surgery in Clifton Village, Bristol, where she uses her own experience to make sure patients fully understand the potential risks.

She explained: ‘I was never told about risks or complications, so I want to make sure that the patients who come to me understand exactly what will happen before I put that needle in.

‘If you don’t explain to them that there may be complications, and that hyaluronidase, which they would need to dissolve the filler, is very expensive – plus there is currently a shortage in many parts of the world, so not every doctor has easy access to it – then you are leaving them vulnerable.

‘The NHS shouldn’t have to be dealing with people going to A&E with complications like occlusions, when blood vessels get blocked, but the difficulty is that people aren’t told the risks and so don’t know what to do.’

Sarah has expressed concern about the rise in people with no medical training injecting filler into their clients.

She said: ‘It’s worrying the amount of unqualified people now doing dermal fillers. Beauticians don’t necessarily go through proper medical training – they just learn from each other – and can’t prescribe medication if needs be, or deal with complications.

‘Doctors and dentists train for years and years, yet there are people going on one day courses claiming to be able to do the same thing.

‘When they’re charging low fees for work too, you have to ask yourself why. How cheap is the filler they’re using?

‘You can easily buy it online for as little as £35 a millilitre – and that’s not something I’d put in my own face, let alone my patients.’

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