A Chinese actress warned of the dangers of plastic surgery, sharing photos of her damaged nose after a procedure went wrong.
Gao Liu is a singer and actress who starred in several films and TV shows and is seen as a kind of rising star. But it has come out of the spotlight in the past few months.
Posting on the popular social media platform Sina Weibo, she explained that her absence for months was due to a “cosmetic surgical incident”, which left her with nose necrosis, meaning that the tissue at her tip died.
Graphic images follow
Gao shared images with his five million followers, sparking discussions about cosmetic surgery, which is extremely popular in China.
She said that in October a friend of hers introduced her to a plastic surgeon at a clinic in Guangzhou city.
The actress said she decided to go ahead with nose surgery due to suggestions that she “make a slight cut”, and she thinks it would help boost her career.
“The whole procedure took four hours. I thought that in those four hours I would be more beautiful, ”she told her followers.
“I didn’t expect these four hours to be the start of a nightmare.”
She said that after the procedure, her nose was “itchy and tingling” and then repeatedly became infected, although she was told she could return to work in December or January.
“The skin on the tip of my nose … got darker and darker and my nose got necrotic,” she said, adding that she had suicidal thoughts.
Gao said he ended up being hospitalized for two months and lost 400,000 yuan ($ 61,800; £ 45,200) at work.
She said it will not be possible to have follow-up, reconstructive surgery for at least a year, due to the extent of the damage.
The popular news site The Paper shared public data from the Tianhe District Health Department in the city, showing that the clinic where Gao was treated had already received five administrative penalties between March and October 2020. It is unclear which rules were violated.
A series of complaints have been made to the agency about the clinic since Ms. Gao shared her experience, according to The Paper.
An investigation is underway.
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On social media, some people have asked that people involved in the Gao procedure be held responsible. Others demanded better regulation in the case of cosmetic damage in China in general.
Cosmetic surgery has been popular in China for years – to the point that, in 2004, the country hosted a beauty contest specifically for those who went through the knife.
Procedures are particularly common among young people. The South China Morning Post said in 2019 that almost two-thirds of the 20 million people who underwent procedures in the previous year were under 30, and “one in five were post-millennials” under 21.
The newspaper said that many high school graduates choose to “go under the knife before entering university, believing it will increase your chances at work and in love”.
But the growing demand for procedures has meant that clinics operate without certificates or hire unqualified surgeons.
It is unclear what the situation was at the clinic that Ms. Gao visited.
The State Council of China said in April that it “detected signs of an increase in violations” across the country and reiterated the need for operations to be carried out by “licensed medical staff”.
But, as the Global Times news site notes, many Chinese citizens consider existing regulations to be “chaotic”, not to mention difficult to crack, given that in 2019 “the number of unqualified plastic surgery clinics has exceeded 60,000 … six times that of regular clinics. “