on plastic

In Newfoundland and here at home, pathologists are getting the slit-eyed once-over by a suddenly skeptical public. How do we know if these folks in their lab coats can really tell if we have cancer?

A series of public inquiries will have to be left to handle that. What we do know is that cosmetic surgery ain’t no specialty, there is no accreditation and therefore no way to be bitch-slapped for doing a bad job. This gross regulatory oversight got a bit of exposure back in the fall, when a pretty and young TO professional lost her life to liposuction under a general practitioner’s knife.

A Toronto-based friend of mine, now in medical litigation, did some academic work on just what is the legal framework buttressing cosmetic surgery and found, well, NOTHING. A GP can go for a three hour CME workshop on breast implants and then hang a sign outside her practice saying “Cosmetic surgery, Breast augmentation, Get it here!” Really.

Were I a plastic surgeon who actually studied the art and science of body reconstruction and perfection for about 5 years post med school, I’d be ticked off that the unqualified competition were calling themselves surgeons, taking away my customers (say what you want about “health-care-for-hire”), potentially doing physical harm to said patients that I will have to clean up later, potentially disfiguring the public understanding of plastic surgery, and wasting GP time that could be used for chronic disease management, reproductive care and all the other general problems GPs are trained to care for.

The plastic surgeons DID get pissed, and today the College of Physicians and Surgeons (the body responsible for the professional standards and training for specialists; which is not their union nor the body that presides over the affairs of general practice) meet to approve (or I suppose, not) additions to the vacuum of cosmetic surgery regulation. These will include that GPs not call themselves surgeons nor advertise to provide services for which they are not trained.

Say what you want about an individual’s decision to get liposuction, but any way you slice it (erg, sorry about that), he should be reasonably informed about what he’s getting himself into. My GP can do my pap test…but my boob job? No thanks.