Cosmetic surgery wars put patients at risk

Wednesday October 25, 2006 ins: Cosmetic Surgery News Tag(s):

Technorati Tags: cosmetic surgeons, plastic surgeons

In Australia, there’s a war going on inside the arena of cosmetic surgery. Hospital-trained plastic surgeons and self-styled cosmetic surgeons are at a loss of what specific measures should be placed in order to protect patients from unskilled and inexperienced practitioners.

The Cosmetic Surgery Credentialing Council was established in order to give aid to this rising dilemma. The council is supposed to define what qualifies a practitioner to be accredited. However, it failed to serve its purpose. After more than three years of existence, the council’s 14-panel member of plastic surgeons and cosmetic surgeons was not able to agree on the minimum requirements for complex procedures such as breast augmentation, facelifts, and tummy tucks.

Australia’s Sunday Morning Herald has this to say:

"It is extremely disappointing - the medical profession have proved they cannot regulate themselves," Professor Merrilyn Walton said.

Dr Norman Olbourne of the Sydney Institute of Plastic Surgeons said only doctors who had completed seven years' surgical training in hospitals through RACS should be allowed to perform invasive procedures, such as large area liposuction, because then they would have the expertise to deal with complications that could arise from surgery.

However, surgeons from cosmetic associations also defend themselves. They say that they provided specific training courses in procedures such as lipoplasty and laser rejuvenation, which their hospital-trained colleagues didn’t have.

This battle of who-has-what-qualifications, and the Council’s inability to pinpoint the minimum requirements for the cosmetic surgery practice has placed patients at a very shaky position. When patients do no exactly know the facts of the trade, they end up suffering from botched procedures, inflicted by those whom they believe are qualified to actually conduct the procedure.

If this goes on, the number of botched procedures will increase and patients might lose trust on cosmetic surgery as a whole, even to qualified cosmetic surgeons. Unless immediate action is taken, cosmetic surgery might eventually go into the mud.

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.surgeon-directory.com/trackback/123

Post new comment