Two women from Tampa, Florida, are suffering serious health consequences after they allowed a woman to inject their buttocks with a homemade silicon solution to enhance their appearances.  Both women, in their 30s, were hospitalized after the injections made them gravely ill.

Police arrested Sharhonda Lindsay, 32, on two counts of practicing medicine without a license, a third-degree felony that could bring a five-year jail sentence.  She brewed up a concoction of commercial-grade silicone gel and saline in a kitchen before injecting it into one of the hospitalized women 40 times in the buttocks and the other woman 20 times.  Lindsay was paid $500 for the 40 injections and $250 for the 20.

Within hours, one of the women became ill and was hospitalized early the following morning.  She was suffering damage to her kidneys that was so severe she still requires dialysis and her mother says it isn’t known yet if the dialysis will be a permanent situation.

Medical experts suggest the untrained Lindsay may have injected the brew into a blood vessel by accident, thereby causing the organ damage both women experienced.  They also say the frequency of turning to unlicensed people for cosmetic enhancements such as this is not as rare as might be expected.  And they fear the nation’s economic crisis may persuade more women to turn to substandard cosmetic enhancements instead of to the qualified doctors licensed to provide these treatments safely and professionally.

People are using industrial-grade silicone, paraffin wax, and vegetable and baby oils, and following internet instructions on self-injection at an alarming rate, according to Dr. Julius Few.  The trend is growing so rapidly that Few and some of his colleagues founded the Coalition for Injectable Safety to increase public awareness and educate potential victims against the risks associated with the practice.  Few, a clinical associate of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, is also director of The Few Institute for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

All cosmetic treatments, including silicone injections into any part of the body, are surgical procedures that must be done by licensed practitioners only, be they a dermatologist, plastic or cosmetic surgeon, or any other qualified individual licensed by the state of operation.  A safe, sterile setting is required.

Anyone claiming to legally administer such treatments in a spa, hotel room, garage, or in anyone’s home, regardless of the cost, is operating under false pretenses that can be very dangerous.  According to the mother of the Tampa woman, such a quest for inexpensive, artificial curves is “committing suicide,” “playing Russian roulette with your life.”

The average cost of a “Buttock Lift” procedure is $4,885  (Source ASAPS)

$4,885 for a cosmetic procedure seems expensive for an average person.  Is using the “help” of an unlicensed individual a sane thing to do?