The Times Letters to the Editor – Cosmetic medicine needs regulation

 

Sir, Your article on the regulation of fillers, botulinum toxin and other cosmetic procedures highlights a vital matter that demands legislation (“Class Botox as high-risk, MPs urged”, Jan 5). When medical treatments, particularly interventional treatments, are allowed to be performed by non-medically trained people, patients are exposed to great risk.

Aesthetic procedures should not be a retail transaction in which people simply purchase what they request. Aesthetic procedures are medical procedures and should always be preceded by a clinical consultation with a properly trained medical practitioner, should be grounded in evidence with disclosure of the potential risks and be in the patient’s best interests. That approach is standard in the practice of all branches of medicine and it should be no different here.

The simplest and most effective form of regulation for cosmetic procedures would be to limit the performance of them to medically or dentally qualified professionals, or assisted, in certain circumstances, by specially trained qualified nurses, under governmental oversight.

Procrastination no longer. Patients must come first. To improve safety, aesthetic medicine should be practised as a branch of medicine and not as a commercial free-for-all.

Dr Christopher Rowland Payne
Consultant dermatologist; president,
Royal Society of Medicine aesthetic medicine and surgery section