A woman who developed facial cellulitis and sepsis after having dermal fillers has urged others to thoroughly research practitioners before undergoing cosmetic procedures.
Helena Collard appeared on ITV's This Morning on Monday, October 26, where she told hosts Dermot O'Leary and Sian Welby that she found a practitioner on Facebook and was booked in for treatment the next day. Within days of the procedure, her face became increasingly sore and swollen, and she was later diagnosed with facial cellulitis, a serious bacterial skin infection.
Emergency surgery after infection spread
Helena said she woke up one morning and "didn't feel good about myself" before deciding to take action. After sending the practitioner a picture and asking what they could do to help, she was booked in for the next day. She told the hosts: "I'm one of these, if I'd have booked it for three, four weeks in advance I probably wouldn't have gone and totally wasted my deposit, so I thought right just do it."
Describing the procedure, she said: "It was at his house, (I) went in, he was waiting, said hi, sat down. I had numbing cream on. There was no paper work but I'd never had this done so I didn't realise that there's consultations that need to be in place. I do feel silly at my age, I should know better."
Days later, Helena realised something was seriously wrong when her face continued to swell. She said: "People go out after a filler, how the h*** can they go out? I couldn't even leave the house. I was in pain, the swelling got worse. I was struggling to eat, drink... it really hurt."
Sepsis and recovery
After heading to A&E, Helena was told she had facial cellulitis. She said: "I ended up very, very ill from it. I remember one night I felt so ill I didn't want to bother anyone. I just thought I need to stay awake, I need to stay awake and I sat there on the bed. I was like 'oh wow something was going on', didn't feel totally right at all. Next thing, there was everyone around me."
She added: "I ended up having emergency surgery. They couldn't risk dissolving it so they cut every area because it was full of infection."
Skin health specialist Dr Amiee Vyas appeared alongside Helena and said the infection ended up being sepsis. She said: "Your body then starts turning on its own tissues and it can become potentially life threatening. The images that we are showing here are the ones that we are able to show on day time TV during half term, so it did get worse than this."
Advice for those considering fillers
Asked if she had advice for viewers considering dermal fillers, Helena said: "Do their research, really look into things, check whether people have got those qualifications."
Dermot added that they had reached out to the practitioner behind Helena's treatment, who said "he never set out to cause injury and supports raising awareness of filler allergies". Dermot also noted: "The Department of Health called Helena's experience as unacceptable so we're introducing a licensing scheme to ensure any practitioners carrying out these treatments are properly trained, insured and working to safe standards to ensure what happened to Helena does not happen to others."
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.
