People die after salons ‘treat’ moles

Young people have died after having moles “treated” by clinics and beauty salons, a medical expert told the Oireachtas Health Committee.

“Within the last four years of my practice I have certainly had two deaths from mismanaged moles in young men,” said Dr Patrick Ormond of the Irish Association of Dermatologists.

Dr Ormond, a consultant dermatologist, said properly qualified practitioners knew what was abnormal and could be trusted to give the right advice.

The well-off and well-connected would be sent to the right people but his concern was that vulnerable people were being targeted by misleading advertising.

The consultant was one of a number of experts before the committee yesterday who highlighted bad cosmetic surgery practice where patient safety had been compromised.

President of the Irish Association of Plastic Surgeons, Margaret O’Donnell, said beauty therapists were using lasers to treat skin cancers.

Dr O’Donnell said she was aware of two patients who had attended an appointment with a plastic surgeon in the past three months after having had skin cancers treated in beauty salons.

“Worryingly, one of these patients had already seen her GP about the lesion and had been referred to a specialist when the therapist offered to zap it off for her,” she said.

Dr O’Donnell said doctors were performing operations, such as breast augmentation, with just a basic medical degree: “There is no oversight of such doctors, or of these clinics,” she said.

Dr O’Donnell said stringent changes were introduced in France and Denmark after the PIP [Poly Implant Prothèse] breast implant debacle.

“Strict regulation has been introduced, ensuring surgery is carried out only by those trained to do so. These regulations include a ban on cosmetic surgery advertising, as it is so often misleading and occasionally untruthful.”

Dr O’Donnell called for similar measures to be introduced in Ireland, together with an umbrella body for all the agencies involved and a register of fully-qualified surgeons.

Chief executive of the Irish College of Ophthalmologists, Siobhán Kelly, said advertising and marketing practices should not trivialise the seriousness of procedures or encourage people to undergo them hastily.

Immediate past president of the Irish Association of Plastic Surgeons, Patricia Eadie, said two children from Ireland were recently treated in Britain for severe burns because of a 20% reduction in theatre space at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin.

Dr Eadie, a plastic surgeon who works in the hospital, said the decision to send the children to Britain was made because there was concern that the hospital did not have the safe facilities needed to look after them.

She said the hospital did not have a paediatric burns surgeon because the post had not been financially approved.

Dr Eadie said there was a 14-bed burns unit in St James’s Hospital in Dublin and there were deficiencies there too.

There were times when the unit could not take burns patients from other hospitals because of a lack of nursing staff.

Patients with major burns that ideally should be treated as soon as possible were having to wait around 24 hours before being transferred.