New guidance from the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP) on the remote prescription of medication for non-surgical cosmetic treatments such as dermal fillers, has raised some concern from surgeons.
Caroline Mills, British Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (BAOMS) lead on aesthetic/cosmetic surgery and consultant maxillofacial surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital, welcomed the publication but said it did not go far enough.
“While BAOMS agrees with the introduction of guidelines for remote prescription of dermal fillers and other medications for high street beauty salon practitioners, we want to see regulation of the industry in line with European Union (EU) rules," she said.
“The new JCCP guidance to curb remote prescribing will provide some protection for patients, but it does not go far enough. In the EU practitioners have to have a medical licence to inject fillers, and we need similar regulation in the UK.
“Even with the new guidelines where the prescriber will assess the patient’s suitability for treatment, there is still the risk of serious medical complications because the regulations allow non-medical staff to give non-surgical injectables.”
Caroline Mills explained that patients can suffer vascular occlusion, possibly leading to blindness, or severe allergic reactions both of which require emergency medical treatment: “It’s recognising and managing these problems that is so important and where patient safety maybe compromised.”
The NHS faces increasing costs to treat the high street procedures that go wrong. But, without NHS coding for non-surgical treatment problems the scale of emergency treatment and corrective surgery remains unknown.
“We need regulation in the UK to protect patients properly,” Caroline concluded.
