Doctors urging crackdown on unqualified Botox procedures

Once it was the preserve of the grande dames of Hollywood and was spoken of in secret, if at all.

However, thanks to the popularity of surgically enhanced  reality television stars such as the stars of The Only Way is Essex, plastic surgery procedures have become a multimillion pound industry in the UK.

Now the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) has called for tighter regulation of the industry, saying procedures such as Botox and injectable fillers are being carried out on the High Street by practitioners with little or no training.

Edinburgh plastic surgeon Ken Stewart said it was becoming increasingly common to see patients with problems caused by botched injectable fillers.

“I have seen all sorts of problems: patients with infections, patients with chronic inflammation patients who have had not known what has been injected and which has then reacted with something injected during a second procedure.”

Currently only a doctor can prescribe Botox and the General Medical Council has announced a crackdown on remote prescribing. However, it is not difficult to obtain Botox over the internet and anyone can legally inject it into a patient. For hyaluronic fillers there is even less regulation. Currently, fillers do not have to be prescribed and can be injected by anyone in a High Street beauty salon with  little or not training.

The UK government has introduced a voluntary registration process under the name Treatments You Can Trust. However, there are very few Scottish practices currently signed up to the scheme.

Sally Taber, director of Treatments You Can Trust, said she would like the Scottish Government to do more to persuade businesses to sign up to the scheme. And she said the goal was to raise awareness and to encourage the public to ask more questions.

“We want to make sure the public asks the right sort of questions about what sort of training people have had and about what is being injected and how much,” she added.

However, there are those who think more regulation is necessary and that injectables should only be used by someone with a proven medical background.

Dr Sam Robson, medical director of Temple Aesthetics in Aberdeen, said: “Anybody can set themselves up as an aesthetic surgeon and inject people if they are willing to be injected with something. It is not against the law and I find that really scary.

“I don’t think beauty therapists should be doing Botox and fillers.” She said the problems were intensifying because “unnatural”-looking plastic surgery was becoming popular.

“It has become a status symbol because of programmes like The Only Way Is Essex. People want to look like they have had something done. They want big lips and frozen foreheads.”

A Scottish Government spok-esman said: “There is a range of regulation that applies to health in Scotland and regulation should be proportionate to the risks involved. Sir Bruce Keogh is currently leading a review of the regulation of cosmetic surgery, including the use of injectable cosmetic products such as fillers, and we will consider the implications of the review for Scotland when it is published next year.”