Doctors have warned people to stop wearing hair bands around their wrists after a woman narrowly escaped contracting sepsis from her glittery bobble.
Audree Kopp, from the US state of Kentucky, developed a huge abscess that was resistant to antibiotics and had to undergo surgery, after wearing her hair tie like a bracelet.
Wearing a hairband on her wrist left Audree Kopp with this huge lump She noticed a small red lump on her wrist and guessed it was a spider bite, but when the swelling developed into a painful sore and didn't clear up with antibiotics, she had to got to A&E for emergency surgery. She was told by doctors that her hair accessory had caused the infection as bacteria from the band had made its way into her pores and hair follicles. “I didn't believe it at first, I thought that it was a spider bite, or something else, not from wearing hair-ties,” she told WLKY.com. Dr Amit Gupta, who drained the abscess, said: “You can't put all these hair-ties around the wrist particularly because it can cause problems with the skin, it can cause infection.” “Thank god that I caused it in time, I could have got sepsis,” she says. “Once it gets into your bloodstream, people have been known to go into a coma, your body shuts down it could have been way worse.” The video below contains graphic images:
By Anna Pollitt