UK Woman, 24, Left "Gasping For Air" After Getting Lip Filler Dissolved

A 24-year-old woman in the United Kingdom was left unrecognisable after a severe reaction to a lip filler dissolver. According to Metro, the woman, identified as Shaunna Harris, thought she was going to die after her throat closed up when given a shot of lip dissolver by her aesthetician. She was left "gasping for air" while her face ballooned to double its size minutes after being given the shot in January. 

The 24-year-old had lip filler injected twice before to plump up her pout. She got her first 0.5ml of lip filler when she was 18, and an additional 1ml at 22. Earlier this year, she decided to dissolve her existing filler before topping up with another 1ml. However, the 24-year-old experienced a severe allergic reaction moments after the dissolver was injected. 

"I went to have my lip filler dissolved and I didn't think anything of it because I'd had lip filler put in in the past and it was all fine," Ms Harris said, as per Metro. 

Ms Harris revealed that the complications began when the 1ml she wanted to dissolve had "migrated". "Straight away I knew something wasn't right. She gave me the dissolver and my lips just blew up," she said. "I asked the aesthetician if it was normal and she said 'yeah people's lips do tend to swell up' but it didn't look normal," she recalled. 

The 24-year-old further said that she started to get itchy and painful hives all over her eyelids in the next five minutes. "Then within 10 minutes, my face was all blown up and swollen. I couldn't see out of my eyes," she said, adding, "I looked unrecognisable". 

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Ms Harris said that she was "struggling to breathe" and thought she was going to die. "My body was covered in hives. I felt like my skin was burning," she recalled. 

"When they gave me the adrenaline, it opened up my airways and my breathing improved. But my face was swollen for days after. I was really worried my face wouldn't go down. I didn't go out of the house for three days," Ms Harris said. 

According to doctors, Ms Harris' reaction to getting lip filler dissolved was due to an allergic reaction to hyaluronidase - a soluble protein enzyme which is often used by aestheticians to break down the hyaluronic acid found in lip filler.