Body Piercing Gone Awry - 'Fashion' To Die For...

By John Reinan HealthScout Reporter
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/hsn/20001230/hl/body_piercing_gone_awry_1.html

12-30-00
Red Sonia wanted a look to die for -- and she got it. 

Sonia, whose real name was Lesley Hovvels, once appeared on British television to show off her more than 100 body piercings.

But the 39-year-old Welsh woman died earlier this year of a massive infection caused by her failure to properly care for the dozens of piercings in her nose, ears, lips and other body parts.

It's an extreme case. But doctors warn that recent medical journals have chronicled hundreds of cases of injury, infection and even death caused by piercings gone bad.

"In many cases, it's safe to say, the guy who cuts your hair has more training than the guy who pierces you," says Dr. Shari Welch, an emergency room physician at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City.

"It's pretty scary stuff," says Welch, who recently saw a 19-year-old woman nearly suffocate because emergency room doctors had trouble getting a breathing tube past the piercings on her tongue.

In another incident, a 19-year-old man's urethra was "shredded," Welch says, after a car accident that ripped loose a small ring from his penis.

"For his life, he's going to have trouble urinating," she says. "I'm sure he wasn't thinking of that when he made this fashion choice."

Nobody knows exactly how many people are pierced in the United States, but the number certainly is in the millions -- and growing rapidly, as a look around will tell you.

Piercers often lack training

Yet many piercers are poorly trained or not trained at all, leaving their customers at risk of infection or worse.

"A lot of piercers don't have skill or care, and that's dangerous," says Elayne Angel, a New Orleans piercer and board member of the Association of Professional Piercers. "I see a lot of bad piercing."

"You have to take care in choosing your piercer," Angel says. "Too many people think that, just because somebody is charging them money, that person is a professional."

Sanitation is perhaps the biggest problem. From Welch's review of the medical literature on piercing, she estimates that more than one in five body piercings results in an infection.

Welch also has seen at least one piercing-related death: an 18-year-old woman whose organs shut down from infection 10 days after she got her tongue pierced.

Failure to follow sanitary procedures -- either during the piercing or after -- can lead to staph, strep, tetanus or hepatitis infections, Welch says. Unsanitary piercing also can carry a risk of contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Adding to the problem is the increasing popularity of piercings in areas such as the navel, ear cartilage, tongue and genitals.

Compared to the traditional pierced earlobe, these other areas are more difficult to take care of and more likely to become infected, says Myrna Armstrong, a professor of nursing at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock.

"We did some work with high school students and found a 50 percent rate of infection in navel piercings," Armstrong says. "The problem is, the area is moist, it's irritated by waistbands and it gets fuzzies. And people don't look at it."

As for the increasingly popular genital piercings, Armstrong says there's little medical literature on them.

"Nobody wants to deal with it," she says. "But certainly we know that genital piercings are increasing."

Plan to care for your piercing

Anyone considering a piercing should be prepared to take care of it for quite some time afterward.

Piercings in the ear cartilage, for example, take two to three months to heal and should be cleaned at least twice daily, according to an advisory report by the Student Health Service at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

Tongue piercings should be cleaned a dozen -- yes, a dozen -- times daily for six to eight weeks. And navel piercings should be cleaned twice a day for nine months, the report recommends.

Some piercers are taking notice of the medical concerns. The Association of Professional Piercers, which represents nearly 500 people who do piercing, is lobbying state legislatures for tougher health and safety regulations on piercing.

"I don't feel under attack. I feel that bad piercers are under attack, and that's as it should be," says Angel, a member of the association's board and owner of Rings of Desire in New Orleans.

Angel, who has been piercing for some 30 years, helped write a comprehensive regulatory bill that was passed into law this year in Louisiana. Among other things, the new law covers sanitation, instrumentation, testing and proper permission for minors.

It's the kind of law that's needed elsewhere, Armstrong says, noting that only 13 states have regulations on body piercing.

And as the piercing trend grows, she says, so does the need for more information on the health risks. The medical community needs to realize that the piercing issue is not going away.

"There is a level of acceptance of piercing in society," she says. "It's not just the bikers and gang members any more. It's not only the lower socioeconomic group that's doing this."

"I don't care if somebody wants to get a piercing," Armstrong says. "That's their decision. But I'm concerned they at least be informed and know what they're getting into."

What To Do

If you have any questions about caring for a piercing, consult your doctor. Meanwhile, consider this:

* Piercings require a lot of care. A piercing in the rim of your ear needs to be cleaned two or three times a day for two to three months. A navel piercing should be cleaned twice a day for nine months.

* Use Bactine or peroxide, but be sure to dilute whatever you use with three parts water. At full strength, these substances can kill not only germs but also new tissue that's trying to heal. Don't use alcohol for cleaning; it's too harsh on the new tissue.

* If you pierce your tongue, you'll have great-smelling breath -- because you should use antiseptic mouthwash on your piercing at least a dozen times a day for six to eight weeks.