Plastic Surgery Regulation Held Lacking

WASHINGTON — Existing regulation of cosmetic surgery is severely lacking, giving rise to deceptive advertising, unqualified doctors and horror stories from patients whose surgeries were unsuccessful, a congressional panel was told Tuesday.

Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the subcommittee on regulation of the House Small Business Committee, said that cosmetic surgery is “dangerously under-regulated” and called for changes at both the state and federal levels.

“Untold numbers of patients seeking the fountain of youth through a face-lift, a tummy tuck or an acid peel sometimes get more than they bargained for,” Wyden said as the panel opened hearings on the subject.

Advertised as Safe

“Suffering, infection, stroke and occasionally death (follow) procedures that are advertised as safe, easy and painless,” he said.

A tummy tuck operation by an unqualified surgeon led to open heart surgery for Santa Ana resident Joyce Palso after an infection caused by the cosmetic surgery spread to her heart, destroying one of its valves, she told the subcommittee.

“I must listen to the tick of my artificial mechanical valve,” she said. “I must live with the horrible scars on my abdomen.”

Palso said that advertisements for the cosmetic surgery she underwent “made it all sound so simple. I decided I could stand a tuck here and there to improve my looks and perhaps look younger. The ads almost sounded like going to get a tooth filled.”

Wyden said that advertisements for cosmetic surgery, which rarely contain disclaimers about the risks of the surgery or the qualifications of the doctor, often are deceptive.

Quoting one such advertisement, Wyden said: “Easy come, easy go. Body contouring through liposuction and laser surgery.” He said that another ad pictured a sleek young woman lounging on a sports car with the caption: “Body by Smithdeal.”

“Smithdeal is her cosmetic surgeon, not her mechanic,” Wyden said.

He called for stronger oversight of plastic surgery advertising by the Federal Trade Commission, which he said has shortchanged patient safety by allowing a “wave of unbridled, often misleading and sometimes false advertising.”

“Patients can’t tell who is qualified and who is not,” he said.

But Anna Davis, an FTC spokeswoman, said after Tuesday’s hearing that the agency is “pretty satisfied” with its performance in regulating cosmetic surgery ads. FTC representatives will testify before the subcommittee on May 2.

Wyden said that existing regulations by state governments and professional organizations should be strengthened to weed out doctors who are not trained to perform cosmetic surgery. Under existing regulations, any licensed physician is allowed to perform cosmetic surgery even if he has received no specific training in the specialty.

Doctors often advertise that they are “board certified” to perform cosmetic surgery, but Wyden said that most of the nearly 100 medical boards offering such certification require little in the way of expertise and are of little help to the consumers.

Donald Weissman, a board-certified physician in Los Angeles, has been charged with professional incompetence and sexual misconduct by the California attorney general’s office.

In parts of a television news report shown at the hearing, one of Weissman’s former clients charged that Weissman left her “lopsided” after performing breast enlargement surgery.

Weissman testified that the charges against him are “absurd” and defended his record as a competent surgeon who had completed thousands of successful operations.

Doctors Supplement Incomes

Doctors increasingly are turning to cosmetic surgery, especially the relatively simple liposuction, to supplement their incomes but they disagree about how much formal training should be required before performing the surgery.

Representatives of the American Board of Plastic Surgeons told the congressional panel that cosmetic changes, such as a nose job or a face-lift, should only be performed by doctors who specialized in plastic surgery during medical school.