The woman in her late thirties called me at the practice and said that she had had her lip injected with hyaluronic acid by a naturopath that morning and that it was now blue. She was worried, even if the alternative practitioner dismissed it as just a bruise and harmless. I called the woman in to take a look. A spot had formed on her upper lip that extended beyond the red lip, was the size of a euro coin and was purple-bluish in color. The surrounding skin appeared lighter than the rest of the face. I carefully pushed in the tip of a surgical forceps. The time it took for the area to refill with blood helped me assess the blood flow situation. It usually doesn’t take a second for the skin to redden again. Significantly more time passed here – not a good sign.
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