Cosmetic Surgery Safety in Australia Compromised
Australia has many of the same regulatory issues that the US has in regard to who can perform cosmetic surgery. Unbelievably, in the United States, any medical doctor can perform plastic or cosmetic surgery. There are no restrictions on practice even if there is absolutely no evidence of appropriate training. In the US, there is only one certifying board for plastic surgery and that is the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Cosmetic surgery boards are not legitimate and do not have the ability to call themselves board certified doctors.
The information below is excerpted from “Legitimizes the activities of unscrupulous operators: Cosmetic surgery safety fears” by Natassia Chrysanthos.
In Australia, doctors will be able to receive an official endorsement in cosmetic surgery from the Medical Board of Australia despite not undertaking the training that would make them proper surgeons, after the country’s health ministers agreed to create a special category in an attempt to regulate the controversial industry.
The move has alarmed the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the body in charge of surgical training and qualifications, as well as several other plastic surgery and nurses groups, who say it will give a green light for practitioners to conduct invasive surgery without the proper safeguards and put patients at risk.
State and federal health ministers last year flagged urgent action to improve the safety of the $1.4 billion cosmetic surgery industry and make it safer for the public. They made changes in December that will ban doctors without suitable qualifications from calling themselves cosmetic “surgeons” as well as restrict their use of patient testimonials – decisions that were welcomed by the health sector.
But an additional measure approved at a health ministers’ meeting last month means people practicing cosmetic surgery without a surgical qualification could apply to the medical board as having been officially “endorsed in cosmetic surgery” under a new mechanism.
The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons has accused Health Minister Mark Butler of ignoring its advice that there was no need for an additional cosmetic surgery endorsement because surgery qualifications were already available through existing rigorous training.
President Sally Langley said the endorsement model did not require the high standards of her college’s minimum five-year specialist training and there was no precedent for how it would be done.
But the president of the Australasian Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, Tim Edwards, remarked:
“The most glaring error [is] it deviates from the pathway of every other specialist surgical qualification in this country. And why on earth would you do that? We shouldn’t be accommodating people who want to thumb their nose at the system of surgical training that applies to every other surgery. If you say only surgeons with a specialty qualification can call themselves surgeons, but then bring in a qualification so that people without can practice surgery, then you’ve undermined the standard you sought to enforce. They are complex surgeries that carry significant risk of injury and harm to patients, as we’ve seen in the media, and they require the same level of expertise and training as cardiology or neurology procedure. And the regulator – which is here to protect the standard of surgery in this country – is going against what the provider of surgical training is recommending. That’s a staggering thing when you think about it.”
This is certainly a compelling perspective that has been well articulated. We will have to wait to determine how the program is orchestrated.
Dr. Kenneth Hughes, interesting as it may seem, sees dozens of patients from Australia for all types of plastic surgery concerns. Some of the most commonly requested procedures are mommy makeover, liposuction, and Brazilian buttlift.
Dr. Hughes also performs a host of revision procedures and some less common procedures like fat necrosis removal and silicone injection removal.