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. I'm sure he wasn't thinking of that when he made this fashion choice. Yet many piercers are poorly trained or not trained at all, leaving their customers at risk of infection or worse. 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. 10 days after she got her tongue pierced. 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. The problem is, the area is moist, it's irritated by waistbands and it gets fuzzies.