Doctors warn Brazilian butt lifts can be dangerous, with more and more 'dead fat' being injected into people's butts

• Doctors are warning of the risks of the Brazilian butt lift, one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries today.
• BBLs can lead to death if fat is injected improperly into a patient's butt.
• More affordable "chop shops" and larger doses of injectable fat also concern plastic surgeons.

As demand for Brazilian butt lifts, or BBLs, has increased, so have the number of doctors offering the procedure. But quality control has become a problem, which increases risks, various plastic surgeons told New York Times reporter Abby Ellin.

The BBL is a potentially fatal procedure because it requires injecting a person's excess fat into their butt near a vital heart artery. If injected into the wrong area of the butt, the fat can enter that artery, block it, and stop blood flow, sometimes causing death.

According to a July 2017 report by the Aesthetic Surgery Education and Research Foundation in Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 2 out of every 6,000 BBLs result in death.

Today, a BBL can cost anywhere between $3,000 and $30,000, depending on where a patient is willing to travel and the risks they're willing to take, according to the Times.

'Chop shops' offer affordable BBLs, but can come with potentially fatal consequences

The trend has given rise to "chop shops," unvetted clinics where inexperienced or unvetted doctors offer cheap BBLs, plastic surgeons told the Times.

These clinics - in places like Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, South America, and Turkey - are often run by doctors whose credentials aren't clear from a Google search, the Times reported.

Ismael Labrador, who performed BBLs in Miami, had four patients die from the procedure. According to the Times, he changed his clinic name at least twice since 2016 and his information is difficult to find online.

"The problem is not only that these doctors are inadequately trained, but that operating as rogue actors there is no way to either collect their data or send them a warning about the dangers of a procedure," Dr. Steven Teitelbaum, a board-certified plastic surgeon who helped draft BBL guidelines in 2018, told the Times.

Doctors don't know the longterm effects of injected 'dead fat'

As BBLs have become more popular, the amount of fat injected during any given procedure has also increased, reported the Times.

There's no data on the long-term effects of the procedure, since it was first performed in 1960 and became popular in the US in 2010. For that reason, some plastic surgeons avoid BBLs altogether.

"As far as I'm concerned, at this moment in time it is not a procedure that is routinely and uniformly done safely," Dr. Arthur W. Perry, a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York and New Jersey, told the Times.