The news about the health of Silvina Luna, who is hospitalized in intensive care, assisted by a ventilator, generates much concern. The model and actress suffers from kidney disease that requires her to do dialysis three times a week and is waiting for a kidney transplant.
His health has been affected for years by methacrylate poisoning. It is that in 2011 he underwent a treatment for aesthetic purposes with Aníbal Lotocki, who applied the substance that entered his bloodstream and caused a chronic picture of hypercalcemia (high level of calcium) and kidney failure.
Methacrylate: what is it
Polymethylmethacrylate is a plastic, known by the acronym PMMA. In medicine, the resin of this plastic is used for the manufacture of bone and dental prostheses. It is also used to coat certain tablets to slow the absorption of drugs.
For some time, it has been known that compounds such as methacrylate, but also silicone or paraffin, can cause serious alterations -early or late-, especially of kidney function.
Risks of methacrylate
Among the causes, a study highlights that complications from methacrylate injection can occur when quality products are not used, due to incompetence or negligence of the professional, due to excess application of the compound or immunological reactions of each patient.
It is a substance that is only allowed to be applied in minimum doses (1ml) and only if it comes from medical products for aesthetic purposes approved by ANMAT, explains the aesthetic doctor and plastic and reconstructive surgeon Fernando Felice.
Excess methacrylate generates inflammations that can generate hypercalcemia processes. Photo Shutterstock.
Felice explains that, for these reasons, it is not the right treatment for that area of the body: "The methacrylate filling that is used for aesthetic purposes comes in syringes of 1 cubic centimeter, and is sold for aesthetic purposes, so if you wanted to fill a buttock, for example, you would need at least 100 syringes on each side."
He continues: "But it is not the ideal filler for a soft structure such as a buttock, formed by skin, fat and muscle. You can not place a polymethylmethacrylate filling, which after all is still an acrylic, a hard plastic, it is not indicated for gluteal filling. "
Unfortunately, he reflects, these substances continue to be applied or injected in doses toxic to the body, or in indications not authorized by ANMAT.
"Many doctors use these products, although they know that they are prohibited because of the harm they generate. The reason is that its cost is much lower than those approved by health entities such as ANMAT and FDA, and they prefer to endanger the health of patients, for the sole fact of obtaining greater profitability, "says Felice.
And he adds: "Today, many models and vedettes have injected different harmful products into the buttocks, such as liquid silicone (biopolymers) and methacrylate for traumatological or dental use. These substances in such large doses, are extremely dangerous."
"The ideal for buttock augmentation is to use prostheses or the patient's own fat, although there are also hyaluronic acid products specially designed for body filling."
The impact on the kidney
If placed in high doses, this compound alters the internal environment, which causes an increase in calcium, with health consequences, especially serious at the renal level.
Now, why can methacrylate have an impact on the kidney?
The nephrologist Gabriel Lapman, author of "More Z, less P (More shoes, fewer pills)" explains to Clarín: "The problem with methacrylate is that it generates inflammation, because it is a foreign body, so the excess of methacrylate and especially when it is done in an unauthorized way, generates inflammatory granulomas, which are nonspecific inflammations that in the long run can generate hypercalcemia processes. "
And he delves into the causes by which the processes of hypercalcemia are associated with kidney damage: "when there are high levels of calcium, that excess calcium can fall into the kidneys and generate inflammations and chronic kidney disease, and that was what was happening over time, that these granulomas were producing kidney damage due to excessive calcium production, Then the calcium is clogging the tubules and when clogged they generate kidney failure. "
Buttock fillers
Felice says there are two ways to do this procedure safely.
"The gluteal filling is done with prostheses that are placed inside the gluteal muscle or with a fatty filling (liposuction is the waist area, the sacral area, the area of riding pants, inner thighs, which would be all the areas that contour the gluteal region). If it is fat is placed in the gluteal region, it can be projected and volumized a little more, "he said.
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