Report: Botox injections 'no more regulated than toothbrushes'

There are calls in the UK for tougher controls over who can offer cosmetic surgery in order to give patients better protection.

A Department for Health report said botox injections are no more regulated than toothbrushes.

A woman who had her faulty breast implants removed has called for recommendations to shake up the industry to be fully implemented.

Elizabeth Cathey welcomed the independent review group’s proposals and said that if adopted by the Department for Health, they could help spare women a similar ordeal to her and thousands of others who had Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) implants.

Miss Cathey is a member of the UK-based PIP Action Campaign group, which has been battling for a legal settlement with some private clinics which have refused to unconditionally replace faulty implants.

The 25-year-old, from Worcester in the West Midlands, said: “The proposals put forward set out a more rigorous regime for an industry which, as the PIP scandal has shown, was under-regulated and placed service users at unacceptable risks, leaving many without proper redress when things went wrong.

“In the worst cases, it is an industry which has allowed sharp business practice to go unchecked and where the legal duty of care between patients and cosmetic surgeons seems to have become secondary to profit margins.”

She added: “I particularly welcome the review group’s recommendations calling for proper training across practitioners of all levels of the cosmetic surgery industry, the introduction of the ombudsman, and the development of a proper insurance system in the event of product failure or company insolvency.

“If implemented in full, I believe the recommendations will lead to greater protection and improved standards of safety for patients, as well as accountability for those delivering cosmetic surgery or related services.

“It is a shame the safeguards now being discussed will have come too late for many thousands of British women who were given faulty implants.”

Miss Cathey had a breast enlargement using PIPs when she was 18 but had them removed at her own cost last year, when health fears over the sub-standard implants started to come out.

When her implants were removed in February 2012, the silicon inside was found to have leaked – what surgeons call a gel bleed.

Next month, she is travelling to Marseille in France with a group of British women where a trial of five executives from the firm which supplied the faulty breast implants is now under way.