Woman nearly goes blind after lip fillers burst

An Australian woman nearly went blind after her lip fillers burst and she swallowed the solution, the Mirror reports, citing 9News.

Mikayla Stuchbery, a disability worker based in Australia, purportedly visited a Laser Clinics Australia outlet to get a lip filler treatment. Soon after, however, her lips swelled up and became painful for her. Doctors believe the lip filler was injected into the arteries in a bungled procedure.

"There was a part where I got blisters and they burst, and I started swallowing the filter and passed out," she recalled. "You see horror stories on TV, but assume that would never happen to you, until it actually does."

Stuchbery told 9News that her doctor claimed that her lips were infected as a result of an allergic reaction to the antibiotics she purchased. She was eventually let go from her job, she said, after she had to take off to deal with her illness.

In a separate interview, Mark Ashton, who previously served as the president of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, said that the clinic was, in fact, at fault.

"In my opinion, there is little doubt that this poor girl has had filler injected into the arteries supplying her upper lip," he said. "That filler has then gone on to cause tissue death. It could have gone up into her face, up along the side of the nose and into her eye, and she could have been rendered blind instantaneously."

Still, the clinic maintained that it did nothing wrong. In a statement, it told 9News that it "followed all appropriate clinical procedures mandated by Laser Clinics and there is no report or finding to the contrary that has been brought to the attention of Laser Clinics to suggest any error."

In August, several women in Arizona ended up in an emergency room after a botched procedure left them with swollen, oozing lips. It was unclear whether law enforcement would press charges against the individual responsible for performing the procedure.