By Editor,J. Peterson

Copyright dailymail

A popular influencer has urged her followers to beware of dangerous cosmetic procedures after she was tricked into getting surgery to change her eye color.

TikTok star Dina Khalil underwent iris implant surgery as a teenager in Egypt to change her naturally brown eyes to a bright blue, only to be left with serious side effects that almost caused permanent blindness.

Speaking to the Daily Mail about the ordeal, the 27-year-old said her doctor talked her into the procedure after she initially went in for laser eye surgery.

‘I went in with my dad to get Lasik, and then the doctor offered this “amazing surgery” with apparently no risks, no side effects, 100 percent safe,’ she said.

Khalil said she was never insecure or unhappy with her natural brown eyes, and she only decided to go through with the color change after the doctor suggested it.

‘It’s so stupid when you look back and think about it – it’s insane. But there was this doctor in front of us telling us that there’s no problems.’

‘I was a baby. I had never even thought of something like that.’

Khalil said she had no idea she was actually getting an iris implant and believed that her eye color was being changed through non-invasive lasers.

Initially, she was happy with the results and spent around 10 years enjoying her new blue eyes.

However, about a decade after the procedure, Khalil started experiencing redness and irritation in her eyes, which then advanced to vision problems.

‘I started abusing whitening eye drops, like Lumify and Visine. In the beginning they were amazing, but then they stopped working and obviously there was a bigger issue. That’s when everything started to get worse.

‘My vision started getting really blurry, and I wasn’t seeing clearly anymore. At first it only happened in the morning and then would clear up during the day, so I didn’t think there was anything wrong.’

But before she knew it, her vision started rapidly declining even further to the point that she believed she could be going blind.

The influencer, who was living in New York at the time, reached back out to her doctor in Egypt. She told the Daily Mail that he completely ghosted her when her vision got worse.

She then turned to New York-based ophthalmologist Dr Seth D Potash, who discovered that she not only had iris implants, but that they had caused her to develop glaucoma.

Doctors can measure corneal endothelial cells (ECD) or photoreceptor cells (rods and cones) in the retina. Numbers tend to decrease with age and declining eye health. Khalil told the Daily Mail the cell count in her eyes was closer to that of someone 60 or 70 years old – significantly lower than it should have been.

After being told that she could lose her eyesight for good, Khalil went to Los Angeles to work with ophthalmologist Dr Nicole Fram for glaucoma surgery.

Khalil ended up having a total of five surgeries to save her sight. She was able to regain 20/20 vision in one of her eyes.

‘They literally cannot believe how my eyes have healed,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s a miracle.’

While Khalil still needs to undergo a cornea transplant in one eye, she is relieved to have made it through the ordeal.

‘It was the hardest time of my life,’ she told the Daily Mail.

Khalil urged anyone considering an iris transplant to ‘please don’t ever do it.’

Her eyes are now back to their original brown, but Khalil wears colored lenses when she wants to switch back to blue.

‘If you want to wear contact lenses then do that. I wear contact lenses now and they look exactly the same,’ she continued.

‘Don’t do any cosmetic surgery when you’re that young. You don’t need it. And don’t touch your eyes.’

Khalil isn’t the only social media star to suffer serious consequences after messing with their eyes.

OnlyFans model and self-proclaimed plastic surgery addict Mary Magdalene almost went blind after tattooing her eyeballs.

The controversial star already had the white of her left eye tattooed black, but she told her followers that she wanted to get her right eye inked neon green to look like a ‘mutant hybrid apocalyptic otherworldly goddess.’

However, just hours after the procedure, the yellow ink injected during the process began to clump near her tear duct and then seeped into her lower eyelids.

‘There’s a big clump in the corner that isn’t spreading – it’s like it’s stuck there,’ she said in a TikTok video.

‘It’s completely bruised and completely bloodshot. I don’t want them to amputate [sic] my eye for no reason, but I woke up just now and have so much light sensitivity in both eyes. I can barely even see.’

In a series of videos following the procedure, Magdalene asked her followers for advice, as her eye began to swell dramatically until she couldn’t see.

‘I think I should go to the ER,’ she said in a video, before heading to the hospital.

Some people are turning to safer alternatives than eyeball tattoos and iris implants to change their eye color.

Keratopigmentation has become a popular way to transform the eyes, although it is not without risk.

The procedure involves doctors implanting medical-grade dye into the cornea – the translucent front part of the eye – to permanently change its color.

Celebrity surgeon Dr Deepak Dugar, known for his scar-free nose surgery, told the Daily Mail he is ‘cautious’ about the procedure despite its growing popularity.

‘The risks – including inflammation, light sensitivity, scarring or even vision loss – are significant and should not be underestimated,’ he said.

‘This type of procedure should only ever be performed by a board-certified ophthalmologist who is fully trained to manage any complications that may arise, both immediately and in the long term.’

He told the Daily Mail that when it comes to these treatments and surgeries, there is a wide range of options, each with varying degrees of risk. But, he said, ‘balancing the risk/benefit ratio of every elective procedure is always imperative.’

Dr James Tsai, president of New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, also warned against cosmetic eye surgery.

‘These risks can be sight-threatening and can include glaucoma, cataract and corneal problems,’ he told ABC News in 2014.

Additionally, experts from The American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Glaucoma Society and the Contact Lens Association of Ophthalmologists strongly discourage permanently changing your eye color due to the risks of infection and vision changes.