01/01/2012
This is a question that thousands of people ask themselves every day. The number of doctors and even non-physicians providing these services is multiplying at an alarming rate and there seems to be no government regulation controlling the situation. Every specialty is offering cosmetic procedures in order to boost their income and the public is confused about who to trust. I would like to give a few examples. We all know that after a car accident, one would bring the vehicle to a body shop for repair. We might also get some references to make sure that this body shop does a good job, so it doesn’t look like the car had work done on it.
You wouldn’t bring the car to a mechanic who normally repairs engines or transmissions. You also wouldn’t trust your car to your neighborhood gas station and you would certainly not let the carpenter or the roofer fix it.
In medicine today, many doctors allow themselves to inject Botox and Restylane, offer skin care and use laser treatments. If they can, some doctors will also try to get patients to agree to some surgical procedures without having had any significant training in that specific field.
Without any oversight from the regulatory agencies, it really comes to Caveat emptor (buyer beware). The buyer (public) needs better information about who is who in medicine and surgery. They need to know what kind of training makes a good internist or cardiologist. What kind of training and discipline is needed to make a good surgeon, urologist or brain surgeon and finally, what makes a legitimate plastic surgeon better for assisting in their cosmetic needs. Plastic surgery is in charge of our appearance just like the body shops are in charge of the look of our car. It takes seven to eight years of painful competitive training after medical school for most plastic surgeons to start a practice. All of this training is in the field of surgery and plastic surgery, which is very different than medicine where training is mainly directed toward diagnosis and medication.
Why is it that I see patients allowing doctors in other fields than plastic surgery, perform procedures on them to improve their looks?
I think we have failed to give adequate information to the public. We are a relatively small group, don’t have the same lobbying power as compared to other specialists or general practitioners, and we can’t get the regulators to limit their scope of practice. The situation is likely to get worse as many doctors would simply give up taking care of sick patients due of declining reimbursements and declare themselves specialists in cosmetic medicine.
So Caveat emptor (buyer beware).