Article content continued

“A common treatment in Asia is to inject Botox into those muscles to shrink those muscles which gives the face a more angled and narrower appearance,” said Dr. Brown, a plastic surgeon and University of Toronto associate professor, who stressed he had no knowledge of this particular case.

The treatment requires regular followups for further injections to maintain the desired effect.

A litany of things can go wrong when injecting Botox — a trademarked name for a neurotoxin that paralyzes or weakens muscles. Too much can overly paralyze a muscle, Brown said. Misplaced injections can paralyze the wrong muscle, or worse, damage an artery or kill tissue in the area. And it can lead to infection needing corrective surgery, as police said happened in this case.

“But that risk is extremely, extremely low when being performed by a certified, trained individual in a proper facility in a proper sterile environment,” Brown said. Drugmakers in Canada, he said, only sell the drug to licensed physicians.

Det. Charles Lee, the lead investigator on the Dr. Kitty case, declined to discuss specifics about the investigation. He did say that he had publicly released the accused photo in an attempt to find other victims. As of Monday evening, he said there was only one victim to have come forward.

“I can’t tell you how many people were involved,” he said. “The charges have been laid and it’s before the courts and I’m still trying to gather the evidence. I don’t want to disclose too much in terms of where it’s leading me right now. If there’s other victims, great. I can lay more charges.”

Police arrested Jingyi “Kitty” Wang, 19, on Friday. She is charged with aggravated assault — defined in the criminal code as an act that “wounds, maims, disfigures or endangers the life of the complainant.” Wang is next scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 9.