Former nurse, Ms Jenny TRAN, aka Marie WILLIAM and aka Thi Cuc TRAN, performed a series of injections into a 27-year-old male patient’s face after leading him to believe she was a registered nurse. She injected an unregistered hyaluronic acid filler into the forehead of the man who came to see her because he wanted a lip enhancement. TRAN has been permanently banned from providing any injectable cosmetic treatments. The man suffered necrosis as a result of the procedure.
The male patient visited TRAN for a lip enhancement procedure on the recommendation of a friend. However, she advised him that he did not need to have his lips enhanced and should have hyaluronic acid injected around his eyes and in his forehead instead. The man alleged that during the treatment — which involved the application of a unregistered ‘numbing cream’ imported from Korea — he told TRAN that he was experiencing intense pain.
He said Ms TRAN advised him that the pain, along with some discolouration and significant swelling of his skin around the injection sites, was normal and gave him antihistamine tablets to take home. The NSW HCCC found the antihistamine was likely diphenhydramine under the brand name Paxidorm, which is not available in Australia, and that her supply of the tablets contravened the Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Act.
The patient became increasingly unwell over the next few days, suffering swelling and redness of his forehead as well as nausea, drowsiness, headaches, diarrhoea and depression after taking the tablets. He returned to the clinic and was told by Ms TRAN’s husband that the product injected was not Restylane obtained in Australia but a product that had been imported by the couple from Korea or Vietnam. At a third consultation TRAN returned the $1,000 the man paid her. TRAN subsequently visited the patient and supplied him with the antibiotic ciprofloxacin 500mg (Cifran) without authorisation. The HCCC found that TRAN had personally obtained the antibiotic by telling a medical practitioner it was for her own use.
“The evidence also indicates that the procedure performed by Ms TRAN on the male patient was unsafe, incompetent and outside her expertise and training. The procedure involved the medically unsupervised injection of an unregistered, unprescribed substance into the man’s forehead and glabella region,” the HCCC said. “This had the potential to cause vascular compromise, or compression or embolisation of the filler material into the man’s vasculature. The procedure performed by TRAN in fact caused necrosis of the skin, infection and scarring on the man’s forehead, necessitating ongoing treatment to restore the skin’s condition.”
Ms TRAN was found to have committed multiple breaches of the Code of Conduct for Unregistered Health Practitioners. These included providing treatments and medications she was not competent, qualified or authorised to provide and using previous and embellished training qualifications to mislead. The HCCC also found that Ms TRAN has breached the code by failing to provide treatments in a safe and ethical manner, failing to take safety precautions to reduce the chance of infection and administering inappropriate and potentially dangerous treatments. TRAN was found to pose an ongoing risk to the health and safety of the public and along with the ban on her providing injectable treatments was also barred from administering or supplying any unregistered or scheduled medicines.