You read a title like this and figure this is some made up story or a joke. It is unfortunately true this time:

Reader Laura’s Comment:

“Here’s another horror story about a non-medical professional injecting silicone into someone. This time someone died. There does seem to be more and more of this happening these days and the story talks about it being the economy being the cause but I can’t imagine ever being poor enough to trust someone like the person involved in this incident. The guy who died had silicon injected into his penis. He was trying to have it enlarged and wound up getting a clot in his blood that killed him. They say that it is not unusual for the silicone to migrate to the bloodstream and form a clot. Is it ever a good idea to inject anything into your penis?”

A fake doctor injected a man’s penis with silicone, killing him, police said Friday. Justin Street visited Kasia Rivera, 34, at her home in New Jersey for the penis enhancement procedure on May 5, prosecutors say. But just a day after attending the so-called ‘pumping-party’ the 22-year-old was dead. Street suffered a clot to the lungs and died. A medical examiner determined he died of a silicone embolism.
Source: dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072548/Fake-doctor-delivered-
fatal-silicon-injection-penis-enhancement-went-wrong.html

We have discussed the risk of silicone injections here many times before. In my opinion, good surgeons do not use silicone as an injectible. It just has too many ways to go wrong. The most deadly apparently happened in this case. Silicone embolism is the movement of silicone gel and/or clot in the blood vessels to a distant site. When such a gel clot finds its way to the heart, lungs or brain, it can make this a fatal injection. The relative ease of this complication is amongst the reasons silicone is not a good choice as an injectible product.

Why a man would allow a penis injection of silicone gel is not immediately obvious to me. The penis being a very vascular (blood vessel rich) organ makes the possibility of embolism quite high. This was a set up for disaster.

It is somewhat surprising that people are more frequently allowing silicone injections and silicone injection deaths are becoming more frequently reported. It is equally surprising that people allow unqualified injectors to treat them, but then again as I have mentioned most qualified injectors do not inject silicone.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD