Facial filler foul-ups thwart patients' quest for youth

Msnbc.com contributor reporting: "When Elizabeth Miller, a 55-year-old clinical social worker from Baltimore, got dermal fillers injected into her face last June, she expected she’d look younger. What she didn’t expect were the spots.

“My mouth looked droopy, so they put Juvederm in each side,” Miller says. “And the next day, there were these oblong red shapes on both corners of my mouth. Now, instead of putting on cover-up to hide the shadows, I put on cover-up to hide the red spots.”

There’s no denying the rise in popularity of injectable soft tissue fillers to plump up wrinkles. More than 1.5 million were performed in 2009 alone, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, making facial fillers the second-most popular non-surgical procedure.

But while side effects and complications from these so-called “liquid facelifts” are rare, they do happen. And according to a recent article in the journal Dermatologic Surgery, “increasing use of dermal fillers … is expected to increase the number of complications.”

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Eric Guerrin, 40, hoped a visit to a board certified cosmetic surgeon would get rid of the bags under his eyes (left). Instead, the dermal filler Sculptra formed lumps under his eyes (right). Since then he's had cortisone injections, laser treatment and two surgeries and still isn't back to normal.