Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown left with chronic pain after botched surgery
Queer Eye star Karamo Brown. (Getty).
Karamo Brown has revealed that a botched buccal fat removal surgery that he underwent in 2021 left him with chronic pain.
The Queer Eye star shared details about the ordeal in an interview with PEOPLE on 2 June.
“For years, people have been like, ‘Karamo’s had plastic surgery. He has so much filler in his face,’” he said. “I was like, ‘You know what? I can’t say anything because you can’t get into fights with the trolls.’ But I was suffering for years in pain and no one knew.”
He shared that he decided to get the surgery after gaining 70 pounds during the pandemic. “I was a big boy, and everyone online liked to tell me how much of a big boy I was,” he said.
“So, I was like, ‘Okay, maybe if I slim out my face, I’ll be cute.’ It turned into a year-and-a-half of pain.”
Brown explained that the surgery led to complications affecting his salivary glands. Scar tissue in his cheeks blocked the glands, causing saliva to build up in his cheeks as the scars hardened.
“There’d be times you’d see me smile, and it was tight,” he explained. “My cheeks would be big because they were full of saliva, full of scar tissue. I was in the worst pain.”
The complications also led to bigger issues in his career when he launched his own daytime talk show, Karamo, which premiered in 2022 and ran for four seasons.
“I would shoot six episodes a day, and there’d be times when I was filming my show that my mouth would get so dry and it would be so swollen,” he said. He eventually realised that the scar tissue was less visible as he lost more weight.
He said: “The scar tissue and the saliva were still there, but because I was skinnier, it looked kind of normal. I stopped eating because it helped the feeling of not having so much scar tissue.”
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
