A story and accompanying video published by Daily Mail recently went viral about a 41-year-old woman, Nong Guang from Thailand, who experienced an infection two years after receiving injections in her forehead to treat her wrinkles.
Guang was alarmed when her face became soft and “squidgy” to the touch, leading her to believe something had gone wrong. Earlier this month (two years after her treatment), she checked into a Bangkok clinic (not the clinic where Guang originally received the fillers) complaining of pain in her forehead at the site of the injections. The area had become infected, and the only way to release the buildup was to make a small incision and slowly squeeze it out.
After 10 minutes of extracting the lump of gunk that was living inside her face, surgeons stitched Guang up and she is said to be fine ever since. As Guang told Daily Mail: “I had the filler two years ago, but over the last three or four days it had started to hurt a lot, so I went to see the doctor. My whole forehead was soft and squidgy when it was touched. The plastic surgery was infected. The doctor said there was a problem with it. It hurt a lot and I could move it around under my skin. It left a hole when it was touched. But I’m happy it has been fixed now.”
Although that’s the reported story, when we reached out to a number of dermatologists asking what type of filler could lead to this type of complication, they came back with a surprising answer.