Beware of ‘doctors’ performing plastic surgery

Star: KUALA LUMPUR: Beware of the so-called doctors who perform plastic surgery on your breasts. They could be injecting cooking oil into your body.
In some cases the damage caused by these quacks are so severe that when the patients seek professional help for damage control, it is too late.
Among the surgeries offered by these untrained surgeons are eyelid surgery, liposuction, and nose and breast augmentation.
The complications that patients could suffer from the sub-standard surgeries include severe infection, shifted implants, sinus discharge, sagging eyelids and eyes that could not shut.
Plastic surgeon Dr Kim K. Tan alleged that many non-doctors, in performing plastic surgery, are injecting silicone and different types of oil as well as other “funny” substances into their patients.
“Although these substances can enlarge one's breasts, there can be complications which will have long-term effects on the patients – as long as 20 years,” he said on the sidelines of the 8th annual scientific and general meeting of the Malaysian Association of Plastic, Aesthetic and Craniomaxillofacial Surgeons (MAPACS) yesterday.
Dr Tan is the organising chairman of the three-day conference that was opened by Deputy Health Minister Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad.
“The patients will normally come to us when they feel pain and when their breasts become hard,” he said, adding that the types of operations differ from one patient to another.
“Sometimes you have to take out the diseased part of the breast and put in an implant. Sometimes, you have to take the breast out,” he said, giving a gory scenario of what could go wrong.
He alleged that a lot of people were paid commissions and kickbacks when introducing friends to these quacks brought in by beauticians and beauty saloons.
MAPACS president Dr Angamuthu Rajoo said Chinese women in their 30s and 40s were the major patients of the unprofessional cosmetic “doctors”.
The association suspected that for every surgery done by genuine cosmetic surgeons, the untrained doctors do 10.
Dr Abdul Latiff said the Ministry realised there was ineffective enforcement over the quacks.