A headline that scares us but unfortunately it’s true.
You see absurdly large lips and disfigured faces on the street, in the tram or at dinner in the evening and are appalled? Understandable! We doctors are too.
The business of beauty is flourishing. More and more beauticians without appropriate specialist training and anatomical knowledge deface patients. They attract clients with cheap offers, which we physicians can only shake their heads, because prices including treatment are cheaper the the official wholesale price. “How is that possible? ” We doctors ask us.
The answer is that hyaluronic acid / filler is often obtained illegally abroad or via dubious channels online. The LOT numbers for the identification of the products are sometime fake. A recent article by 20min.ch, in which the president of the Swiss Society for Aesthetic Surgery (SGAC) spoke, reported on this.
Through these practices, the companies that spend a lot of money on research and development of hyaluronic acid products are cheated.
Too seldom do customers care about the education and expertise of the person injecting the products, nor is it asked where the material comes from.
The prosecutor in Zurich has already closed such beauty salons and yet new ones are opened almost every day.
Rightly, we doctors and our clinics are inspected annually for hygiene and professionalism. Injections for beauty treatment belong in the hands of specialists and not in those of beauticians without specialized training.
Too bad that such horrible pictures need to be shown before the politicians react.