Seven Arizona women claim they were in pain after undergoing botched lip filler injections.
Women say she and other women have appointments at the house of a woman in Maricopa who was charging one-tenth of the standard price.
The woman said, she was licensed and showed photos of the results of her past clients, Fox 10 Phoenix reported.
But within hours of receiving their injections, the women’s lips were swelling, oozing pus and developing cold sores.
The fillers used in the lips are made of hyaluronic acid (HA), a clear substance that the body naturally produces.
The acid is mixed with sugar molecules, which attracts water molecules to the lips, and plumps them up.
The woman who was performing the botched injections, Gabby Acosta, was charging around $80 per milliliter of filler.
According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, licensed well-known surgeons to charge about $620 per milliliter.
‘It was cheaper – that’s not the smartest thing – but since I had seen so many people and my friend had been going for a year,’ patient Alexandra Garaventa told Fox 10 Phoenix.
‘She was telling people that she was certified to do lip injections and since I [had] seen other people’s [lips], I had decided why not go.’
At least seven women went to a home in Maricopa get lip injections.
‘Right after I left getting my lips done, an hour later, my lips got huge, like, giant,’ said Garaventa, who claims lip injections caused infection.
Garaventa’s friend, Ashleigh Villaverde, said this was not the first time she received fillers from Acosta, but she felt something was wrong this time.
The pain after was so bad, I couldn’t even feel my lips,’ Villaverde told Fox 10 Phoenix. ‘We couldn’t even sit there and go to bed, our lips were throbbing.’
Many of the women admitted themselves to the ER because of the pain. They were diagnosed with infections but the exact ones are unclear.
‘When I came in, they already knew what was going on,’ Nayhely McLaughlin told Fox 10 Phoenix. ‘They asked if I went to Maricopa [and said]: “We just had, like, eight girls here yesterday”.’
The women say doctors are not sure about if they’ll be permanently scarred or if their lips were every fully heal.