For months, a woman in her 50s was evaluated for a possible cancer in the middle of her chest. A lobulated mass there was pressing on the superior vena cava, the large vein that returns blood from the head and arms to the heart, and her face kept getting puffier. The explanation turned out to be something she had not thought to mention: hyaluronic acid filler injected into her breasts.
Physicians at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz in Kuala Lumpur described the case Sept. 3 in Respirology Case Reports. After a multidisciplinary review, they concluded that filler had migrated from her breasts into lymph nodes in her chest, where a foreign-body inflammatory reaction enlarged the nodes and compressed the vein.
