Bec Oakes
With the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) reporting that over 27,000 cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in the UK last year, plastic surgery is pretty commonplace nowadays.
But there's one popular procedure that plastic surgeons say they'll never get and the reason why is pretty terrifying.
There were more than 2,000 responses to a recent Reddit thread asking plastic surgeons to share the surgeries they'd avoid and why.
And one procedure was by far the most common answer, with medics citing brutal recoveries and a shockingly high mortality rate as their reasons for avoiding it.
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One commented: "It carries a surprisingly high mortality rate and the recovery is brutal."
And a nurse added: "From blood clots to sepsis, it’s just not worth it. If the fat travels into the bloodstream, it’s over. Not worth the risks."
While one surgeon wrote: "BBL is the only aesthetic procedure that has its own autopsy technique."
Yes, the procedure in question is the Brazilian butt lift or 'BBL'.
Plastic surgeon Dan Marsh, co-founder of The Plastic Surgery Group, told Metro why BBLs - a procedure involving removing fat from the abdomen and injecting it into the buttocks - can be so risky.
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He explained: "You can inject up to two litres of fat per buttock either between the skin and muscle or into the muscle itself.
"The risk is if you inject it into the muscle you could accidentally inject it into one of the big veins in the muscle which can be fatal, because fat will lodge in the patient’s lungs."
In fact, BBLs have the highest mortality rate of any cosmetic surgery, with more than one death occurring per 4,000 procedures, as reported by the BBC.
BAAPS encourages its members to refrain from offering the procedure and Marsh stopped performing it after noticing increasing reports of complications.
"I decided it was too risky," he said.
Last year, SZA admitted that she regretted having the major operation and called it 'stupid' and not 'super necessary'.
Reflecting on having a BBL, which she got after seeing slow growth to her butt at the gym, she said: "It was just so stupid. But who gives a f***? You got a BBL, you realise you didn’t need the s***.
"It doesn’t matter. I’ll do a whole bunch more s*** just like it if I want to before I’m f***ing dead because this body is temporary.
"It just wasn’t super necessary - I have other shit that I need to work on about myself… I need to get my f***ing mental health together.
"Not to say you can’t do those things simultaneously, just, for me, I realise wherever you go, there you’ll be."