KNIFE AND DEATH IN BEAUTY QUEST WHEN BREAST IS LESS

AUSTRALIAN women are putting their lives and appearance at risk as they undergo cosmetic surgery unaware doctors don’t require specialist training and facilities have to meet lower standards than hospitals.

Cosmetic surgery in Australia is now a billion-dollar industry as people seek to improve their looks with breast augmentation, tummy tucks, facelifts and even buttock enhancements.

In the past, 15,000 Australian women a year were travelling to Thailand for surgery but that market has plunged by 20 per cent as cut-price boob jobs here, combined with a falling Australian dollar, make some cosmetic makeovers cheaper at home.

Specialists are warning that across the industry a general lack of training and regulation and poor understanding of the dangers is putting Australian patients at risk even when they have surgery at home.

“At least 15 per cent of my breast surgery practice is correcting problems from overseas,” says the censor in chief of the Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery, Dr John Flynn.

At least three Australian women have died in the past eight years after their cosmetic surgery here and overseas went wrong; others have had cardiac arrests, infections, flesh-eating bacteria anaphylaxis and even tuberculosis.

The nation’s medical regulator, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, is moving to impose new mandatory seven-day coolingoff periods on cosmetic surgery for adults, and three months for those under 18.

The Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery applied to have the area recognised as a specialty in 2008 but seven years and a court case later no progress has been made as powerful groups such as the Royal Australian College of Surgeons and the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons resist the move.

“Any doctor in Australia can put up a shingle to say they are a cosmetic surgeon without any specialist training,” warns Dr Flynn.

Professor Merrilyn Walton, a patient safety expert at the University of Sydney, says people don’t realise students straight out of medical school can call themselves cosmetic surgeons.

Sydney-based business The Cosmetic Institute, which has received a high safety rating by auditors, has rocked the industry by offering cut-price breast enlargements for just $5990, almost as cheap as the $5000 it costs to fly to Thailand for surgery and a holiday.

It’s now performing 5000 procedures a year. Three of the institute’s doctors have had formal plastic surgery training and only one is a qualified plastic surgeon.

Cosmeditour, which organises medical tourism to Thailand, is also offering boob jobs on the Gold Coast for $5880 with a plastic surgeon in an accredited hospital.

The institute’s managing director David Segal says his clinics are accredited under ISO9001 international standards and “our adverse medical complication rate is 0.0006 per cent out of 12,000-plus patients”.

Pene Dobell-Browne, an auditor of 18 years, says she’s audited the institute against the ISO standards and would give it a nine out of 10.

How ever, she says she’s seen other facilities where there is a danger of infection with poor sterility and others with cracks in the operating bed that “I consider a threat”.