Model Dies After Having Fillers Injected Into Her Face

A runner-up in one of Brazil's biggest beauty pageants has died after undergoing cosmetic surgery to remove 'laugh lines'. 

Friends of model and mother Raquel Santos, 28, told how she was terrified of dying during plastic surgery but was a 'slave to vanity' who submitted herself to 'every procedure imaginable',Uk Mirror reports. 

The mum-of-two, who was a finalist in the popular Musa do Brasil competition in December, suffered a cardiac arrest following the procedure on Monday, when fillers were injected into her face. 

However police are now investigating whether her reportedly daily use of an illegal horse medicine, which she injected before workouts, might have contributed to her death.

Miss Santos' best friend Debora Azevedo told Brazil's G1 website how the model, who leaves behind two sons aged seven and 13, was 'obsessed' with cosmetic surgery.

She said: "She was very concerned about her looks. She would go off and have procedures without telling her friends so we wouldn't fight with her.

"She was terrified of dying during surgery. But she did it anyway, that was how much she was obsessed with looking good. And she did every aesthetic procedure imaginable, from artificial tans to lymphatic drainage.

"She was so vain. She worked out religiously, she was as addicted to working out as she was to plastic surgery."

Her boyfriend Gilberto Azevedo said her quest for beauty was unnecessary and dangerous.

He said: "She was fascinated by it all, carnival, working out, and she always wanted more. I thought that she, ugly or beautiful, was fine as she was. But she always wanted more, unnecessarily."She smoked a lot and injected Potenay before going to the gym.

Plastic surgeon Wagner Moraes, who conducted the 'laugh lines' correction on Miss Santos, insisted the procedure wasn't responsible for her death.

He said: "It was a simple procedure which lasted two minutes. The big problem is that she was already suffering health complications, applying Potenay to her body every day, including on the day of the surgery.