More men are seeking out ‘penis filler.’ The complications are horrifying doctors.
Dr. Jason Emer, a cosmetic dermatologist and surgeon, still remembers the patient who traveled across state lines, arriving in his office frantic for a fix to the botched procedure that left him deformed.
He also remembers the man who was left in so much shame, he couldn't leave the house for six months. And the man with a gruesome hole in his body as a result of necrosis.
Cases like these, Emer says, are becoming more common. These men are part of a growing group of patients he's seen lately that are in need of costly corrections for complications that arose from penis filler, a cosmetic treatment meant to enlarge the appearance of the penis.
Emer offers the procedure and has been administering it since 2007. He says it's a delicate practice − one that can easily go wrong if not done by a professional with expertise and training.
As this cosmetic procedure has become more popular, more men are seeking it out from unqualified providers, experts in the field say. As a result, many have suffered horrifying complications − though barely any want to talk about it. Instead, these patients are left shouldering lasting trauma in silence.
"Penis filler is like the breast implants of the early 2000s; more men are having it done but the cultural conversation is still in early stages of normalization," says Chris Bustamante, an aesthetic nurse practitioner and the founder of Lushful Aesthetics. "Unfortunately, we've seen patients who have undergone unsafe penis filler procedures, usually outside the U.S. but also with providers who just 'dabble' with the procedure and don't do it for a living."
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With such a delicate procedure, complications abound
Though still a taboo topic, penis filler has grown in popularity in recent years as more men have come to embrace Botox, plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures.
Yet Emer believes very few providers have mastered it.
When the treatment goes wrong, he says, it's usually because the patient sought it from a less-experienced provider at a cheaper cost. Bustamante says he's also seen many with complications who got the treatment done in other countries.
"To be able to know how to do it and do it safely, you have to really understand the anatomy, the approach," Emer says.
Emer says he sees patients for penis filler about three-to-five times a day. Over half of these patients, he says, come to him for corrections for past treatments from other providers.
One man detailed to Paste BN how he suffered serious complications after getting the cosmetic procedure from people who were trained in the practice by a med spa owner who was not a doctor.
After his first round of the treatment in 2021, he was left deformed. The man returned to the same provider to correct the issue, receiving more filler at additional cost. These injections, however, did not help. Successive ones, he says, didn't either.
"I was like... absolutely not. This does not look natural to me," says the patient, who asked that we withhold his name to protect his medical privacy.
This ordeal lasted years and took a tremendous toll on his personal life. Finally, in 2024, he says Bustamante was able to use filler to right the wrongs of these past providers.
According to Emer, it's not just important to see a provider with extensive experience; it's also important to take a long-term approach to a procedure like this.
"You can't just be somebody that has very minimal experience to be able to do this," Emer says. "These clients aren't one-and-done. This is a client that 10 years later can come back to you with an issue."
More men are seeking out procedures like these. Why?
Emer says he's seen a change in the men coming to him for penis filler.
The men who used to come see him had a clear reasoning for seeking out the procedure, but he says now that's changed. "What I find is most people actually want it for themselves, their own self-confidence."
Despite the procedure's growing popularity, stigma around it persists. Sean Lathe is one man who says he's had a positive experience after getting the treatment from Bustamante. He has no shame in sharing that he's had it done and wishes more men felt the same way.
"I'm very open about mine," Lathe says. "I have no issue talking about it, and I think that's kind of the way it should be."
Bustamante's other patient, however, is just grateful he was able to get his botched procedure corrected.
When his current round of filler dissolves, he says he won't be getting any more.
"After all of this, I am deciding to just sort of go back to normal," he says. "I really don't need it anymore."