Cosmetics dermatologist and surgeon Dr. Jason Emmer remembers a patient who traveled across the state’s boundaries and arrives at his office to correct the failed procedures that transformed him.
He also remembers the man left behind with extremely embarrassment and was unable to leave the house for six months. And then there’s a man with a scary hole in his body as a result of necrosis.
Emer said these cases have become more common. These men are part of a growing group of patients who need costly corrections for complications arising from penis fillers, and are cosmetic treatments aimed at expanding the appearance of the penis.
Emer offers this procedure and has been managing it since 2007. He says it is a delicate exercise – it can easily go wrong without a specialist and trained expert.
As this cosmetic procedure has become more common, more men are seeking it from unqualified providers, says field experts. As a result, many people suffer from horrific complications – they hardly want to talk about it. Instead, these patients are responsible for permanent trauma in silence.
“Penis fillers are like breast augmentation surgery in the early 2000s. More men are doing it, but cultural conversations are still in the early stages of normalization,” says Chris Bustamante, aesthetic nurse practitioner and founder of Lush Aesthetics. “Unfortunately, we’ve seen patients who have undergone unsafe penis filler procedures, along with providers who “work” the procedures and don’t make a living, rather than outside the US. ”
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Such delicate procedures result in many complications
It’s still a taboo topic, but penis fillers have become more popular in recent years as they have become more accepting botox, plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures.
But Emer believes that few providers have mastered it.
When treatment fails, he says, it’s because patients usually seek it from less experienced providers at a cheaper cost. Bustamante says he has also seen many of the complications he has treated in other countries.
“To know how to do it and be safe to do it, you really need to understand the anatomy, the approach,” says Emmer.
Emmer says she sees patients with penis filler about 3-5 times a day. He says that over half of these patients come to him for corrections for past treatment from other providers.
One man detailed how he suffered from serious complications after receiving cosmetic procedures from people trained in practice by the owner of Med Spa, who was not a doctor.
After the first round of treatment in 2021, he remained deformed. The man went back to the same provider to fix the issue and received more filler at an additional cost. However, these injections did not help. He says that wasn’t the case in succession either.
“I… definitely not. This doesn’t look natural to me,” the patient says.
The ordeal lasted for years and took a major blow to his personal life. Finally, in 2024, he says that Bustamante was able to use fillers to right these past provider mistakes.
According to Emer, it’s not important to see providers with extensive experience. It is also important to take a long-term approach to such procedures.
“You can’t be someone with very minimal experience that can do this,” says Emmer. “There’s not one of these clients. This is a client that can come back with problems in 10 years.”
More men are looking for this procedure. why?
Emmer says he saw the man’s transformation coming to him for penis filler.
The man who came to see him had clear reasons to look for the procedure, but he says that now it has changed. “What I found is that most people actually want it for themselves. It’s their own self-confidence.”
Despite the growing popularity of the procedure, the stigma around it continues. Sean Russ is one man who says he has had a positive experience after receiving treatment from Bustamante. He is not embarrassed to share that he did it and hopes that more men felt the same way.
“I’m very open about myself,” says Lathe. “I have no problem talking about it. I think it should be.”
However, other patients at Bustamante are grateful that he was able to correct the failed procedure.
When his current filler melts, he says he can’t get anything anymore.
“After all this, I’m just deciding to go back to normal,” he says. “I don’t need it anymore.”
