Vanity surgery a perilous path

EDITORIAL

Before liposuction, "nip and tuck" plastic surgery and aesthetic body-sculpting became easily available to those who could afford it, most people had to rely on the looks they were born with and a healthy lifestyle in order to grow old gracefully. Plastic surgery was usually reserved for celebrities and those with a genuine medical need for it, usually because their lives had been blighted by accident, disease or deformity.

No longer. Today we live in an image-obsessed, media-driven society in which vanity and peer pressure to achieve the right, youthful "look" have become big business. The trouble is that sometimes these medical makeovers do not achieve the desired result and have a devastating psychological impact or are botched and cause tragedy.

Recent cases underline the need for better regulation of cosmetic surgery, the urgency of ridding the profession of unqualified and fraudulent practitioners and the importance of making it clear to patients when their expectations are unrealistic. It is essential they be given an honest appraisal of the risks involved. If this had been done, then perhaps a 33-year-old female sales promoter would not now be in a coma in an intensive care unit after a collagen treatment administered by a bogus doctor to make her look younger went badly wrong. And a 22-year-old Chulalongkorn University first-class honours graduate might not have hanged herself in July because she was unhappy that plastic surgery had failed to correct what she perceived as her lack of beauty. She was someone clearly in need of counselling rather than surgery.

Other notable examples that have hit the headlines in recent years have been the incorrect fitting of fashionable dental braces by those unqualified to do so causing infections that led to several deaths, a weight-loss drug purchased over the internet that cost a Nonthaburi schoolgirl her life, a liposuction treatment for a teenager that went disastrously wrong, unpleasant and irreversible side-effects caused by piercing or tattooing, whitening cream that proved to be carcinogenic or caused blotchy skin and unapproved and dangerous dermal fillers injected into the face to fill out wrinkles or smooth out acne scars and plump up the skin to maintain a youthful appearance.

As with all cosmetic procedures, those using products approved by the Food and Drug Administration and carried out by qualified plastic surgeons are reasonably safe, although surgery does carry risk. The low-cost ones performed by poorly trained practitioners are not. They have led to a chain of horror stories here and abroad, usually involving painful deformities which cannot be reversed without causing scarring. As cosmetic procedures grow in popularity here, so must the Food and Drug Administration step up its checks. Consumers must always bear in mind the possible consequences of using cheap, unlicensed products. It is both a false economy and a health hazard.

Thailand is becoming a world leader in the cosmetic and wellness industry and with that comes great responsibility. It is getting so big that tighter controls are needed to protect its reputation. Anyone who can afford to has the right to change the way they look but the process tends to be addictive because one change usually leads to another. The widespread refusal to grow old gracefully is an alarming trend and no longer a simple fad.

There are documented cases of gullible consumers who have destroyed their natural good looks by trying too hard to improve on nature. This can end in tears, hospital or, on occasion, in the tragic loss of a young life. Before they start the process of physically reinventing themselves, they would do well to put aside the mirror, talk to people they respect and do some soul-searching.

Bangkok Post online classifieds

Try buying selling goods and properties 24/7 in our classifieds which has high purchasing power local expatriate audience from within Thailand and around the world.

Source: http://www.news.thethailandlinks.com/2012/09/22/vanity-surgery-a-perilous-path/