People Undergoing Cosmetic Surgery Are Putting Health At Risk Because Too Many Clinics Place Profits Before Safety
A leading cosmetic surgeon says overseas clinics offering treatments routinely put “profits before safety”.
Cosmetic surgeon Dr Manish Sinha also said the UK would benefit from tighter regulations to ensure backstreet clinics weren’t allowed to operate.
His comments come in the wake of a shocking ITV investigation which has given a rare insight into dangerous cosmetic practices being carried out in some of Britain’s high-street salons by ‘wild west operators’.
The footage forms part of a year-long investigation into unregulated cosmetic surgery for a new ITV documentary – ‘Britain’s Backstreet Surgery Scandal’ – in which the new health secretary Wes Streeting commits to taking action against those carrying out these procedures.
The documentary emerged at the same time as case which saw a British woman die after undergoing Brazilian butt-lift surgery in Turkey, an inquest has heard.
Hayley Dowell suffered medical complications at a private clinic after her surgeon left half way through the operation, a coroner was told.
Commenting, Dr Sinha, from Klinkal, said: “I often see patients who have chosen to travel outside the UK to have elective cosmetic surgery, often multiple times.
“The most common reason is the cost or rather the lack of cost as compared to similar procedures in the UK. Most patients I see have returned from Turkey, often with what can be described as botched surgeries.
‘“Patients that will be refused surgery in the UK for BMI or significant medical conditions, are somehow able to get multiple surgeries with an added financial incentive. Unsurprisingly, these patients will then go on to have predictable complications of surgical incisions coming apart, infections and increasingly sepsis setting in. The NHS has always taken the responsibility of carrying this burden but the cycle keeps on repeating.
“Increasingly, I am seeing a convincing set up where surgeons in Turkey are represented by clinics in the UK, that ‘host’ their respective surgeons for a quick consultation and promising a safety net of UK based aftercare. In my experience these clinics only act as agents recruiting patients for profit and the patients do not get the aftercare that they pay for.
“Standards of care differ widely and so do the local regulations. One of the good things in the UK is the quality assurance of the UK training through working in the NHS over many years before being able to join the private sector for cosmetic surgery. Even those surgeons who are able to practice in the UK with their foreign credentials are strictly vetted and monitored by the process of GMC registration and specialist register and the process of revalidation. The Care Quality Commission then provides the second layer of safety net on quality assurance of business premises to the prescribed standards.”
Outlining his current concerns about some of the standards within the UK sector, he continued: “Unfortunately the surgical as well as non surgical cosmetic surgery business within the UK has been historically unregulated. A particular concern is not only that such ‘injectors’ and ‘aesthetic practitioners’ can do what they like in an unregulated way, but also set up courses to produce generations of similar unqualified practitioners to play with unsuspecting people’s lives.
“Even the surgical side of cosmetic surgery is unregulated. There are many CQC registered clinics that offer cosmetic surgery by surgeons who are GMC registered but do not qualify to be on the specialist register. A lay person will not have the know-how to distinguish between the two surgeons and there is an urgent need to protect the public from these unqualified surgeons.
“Frankly dangerous procedures like gluteal injections should be urgently regulated to be only allowed in the hands of GMC registered qualified doctors who meet the standard of training required for such procedures that have a potential to go wrong in untrained hands.”
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