USA Today recently printed a fantastic series of articles on the current epidemic of phony plastic surgeons performing botched procedures on patients. It’s like the Wild West out there, folks. There are dentists performing facelifts, ENT’s performing breast augmentation, and ER docs performing tummy tucks. The USA Today articles are a breath of fresh air for real plastic surgeons, a call-to-action for legislators, and a must-read for anyone considering having plastic surgery. Some main points:
1. Any doctor with a license to practice medicine can perform any procedure a patient wants done. Many non-plastic-surgeons have decided to go into areas in which there’s limited oversight, more money and little, if any, interference from insurers because elective cosmetic surgery typically isn’t covered.
2. “Boards are assembled so you can say you are board-certified,” says Randy Miller, a plastic surgeon who heads the Florida Society of Plastic Surgeons. “No one is pretending to be a heart surgeon, no one is pretending to be a pediatrician, but everyone’s pretending to be a plastic surgeon.”
3. Pitches by cosmetic surgeons who aren’t board-certified in the field sometimes tout low prices and say the procedures are safe and easy to bounce back from, a review of advertising and websites shows… Costs are reduced, in part, when patients are put under local anesthesia rather than intravenous (IV) sedation or general anesthesia. Expenses are much lower when there is no anesthesiologist, hospital or accredited surgical facility. It may be presented as a way to save money, but sometimes it’s the doctors’ only option because their lack of training makes them ineligible to practice in accredited facilities.
4. Being certified by the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery is NOT the same as being certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. There is a BIG difference. The American Board of Plastic Surgery is the only plastic surgery board member of the American Board of Medical Specialties, the gold-standard in doctor certifying boards (like the American Board of Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Surgery, etc.).
You can read the article here. More to come!
