The jig is up: Time to rein in the cosmetic surgery industry

Australia’s booming cosmetic surgery industry has been described as the Wild West. That’s an understatement. Dodgy practices, botched surgeries and weak regulation have been allowed to flourish for decades - largely in plain sight.

Patients have been maimed and surgeries have been botched while politicians were too uninterested to change the laws, regulators were slow to act and the medical profession, too often, sat back in silence.

It took brave patients, whistleblowers Justin Nixon and Lauren Hewish, who worked at celebrity cosmetic surgeon Dr Daniel Lanzer’s clinics and social media experts Michael Fraser and Maddison Johnston, who uncovered disturbing social media practices, to speak up in a joint investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the ABC’s Four Corners to finally get action.

From left: Dr Daniel Lanzer and former staff members turned whistleblowers Lauren Hewish and Justin Nixon.

On Tuesday, the jig was up when the national regulator announced a wide-ranging external review into the cosmetic surgery industry with experienced professionals at the helm. Areas to be examined include better ways to protect patients, the unfettered use of social media by some cosmetic surgeons to promote their services and why medical practitioners and clinicians aren’t fulfilling their mandatory requirements to report wrongdoings.

Martin Fletcher, chief executive of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, made it clear the inquiry was triggered by joint media investigation.

“Obviously we were very concerned by the material that was broadcast on Four Corners and although some of that was known to us and were matters we were actively investigating, there was an awful lot of information we didn’t know.”

He is right about that. Our investigation revealed photos of botched cosmetic surgeries, videos of surgical instruments stored in dirty suitcases, photos inside the clinics of Dr Lanzer showing human fat stored in kitchen fridges, syringes sitting alongside water bottles, expired medication used on unsuspecting patients and staff taking home human fat in shopping bags to avoid regulator audits.

Every few years there are scandals in the cosmetic surgery industry but until now, little has been done. There have been multiple inquiries, often parliamentary inquiries, that produce reports that go nowhere.

This scandal has triggered the first-ever review of the multi-billion dollar cosmetic procedures’ industry by the national regulator, which has acknowledged patients need to be kept safe and that more needs to be done to keep pace with an industry that Fletcher describes as having “unique elements” which make it different to other areas of medicine.

The hope is that this scandal, including the many harrowing stories of patients, who have bravely come forward to share their personal ordeals, will bring some meaningful action.

Maybe now the medical fraternity is ready for it.

If nothing else, the external inquiry should take the opportunity to break down the silos between states and AHPRA and share more information about complaints. It should also look at harmonising standards across state regulators to ensure patient safety. For instance, in Victoria an unregistered facility can legally remove 200ml of fat from a patient, yet the same operator in Sydney could legally remove 2.5 litres of fat.

And as more and more Australians flock to get tummy tucks, face lifts and liposuction, the regulation of social media has never been more important, particularly as so much of it has been allowed to underplay the risks and overpromise the results. It isn’t just AHPRA that needs to step up but also the ACCC and others.

And finally, the use of the title cosmetic surgeon needs to be sorted out once and for all.

As it stands, anyone with a basic medical degree can call themselves a cosmetic surgeon, but state health ministers are currently consulting on possible changes to national laws to protect the title of “surgeon” which would stop the cowboys in their tracks. Given the lives that are at risk, let’s hope they see some urgency in this.

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