Woman left with second-degree burns, scarring after common beauty procedure: ‘I wanted to feel confident’


Woman left with second-degree burns, scarring after common beauty procedure: ‘I wanted to feel confident’

Published Oct. 25, 2024, 9:21 a.m. ET Beauty is pain — but not this kind. A woman was left with second-degree burns and permanent scarring after a microneedling session gone wrong. “I wanted to feel confident without makeup,” Melia Nielsen, 24, told Kennedy News. “Now I’m in an even worse position because I’ve got a huge scar across my face instead of just a few spots.” The Lincolnshire-based finance worker had undergone treatment to improve her skin complexion, shelling out almost $100 on microneedling in July, a procedure that involves puncturing the skin with small needles to generate collagen. “At the time she never said anything about it but I was actually bleeding,” Nielsen recalled. “She only said five or six days later over a message that she’d noticed that I was bleeding quite a bit.” Because she was bleeding, the provider, who she didn’t name, was cleaning the area — with what she suspects was toner — that resulted in a chemical burn on the “new, raw skin.” “At the time it was stinging quite bad and she kept asking, ‘Are you okay,'” she said. “Now I understand why she was asking that.”