Faced with an “alarming growth of illegal injections” in France for the last three years, and the damage that this practice can cause, the SNCPRE (national union of plastic surgery) reacted in a column published in the parisian Wednesday.
It asks “that the sale of hyaluronic acid and other injectable fillers be controlled and that their delivery be made only to doctors authorized to practice these acts.”
Hyaluronic acid is “a natural component of the skin that provides hydration, elasticity and cohesion”, explains the French Society of Dermatology, but its amount decreases with age. Injections of this product can erase wrinkles, but also redraw parts of the face, for example, plumping up the lips.
This allows “corrections ranging from simple hydration of the skin to the treatment of more or less marked wrinkles, to the restructuring of volumes”.
“Hundreds of injectors, not doctors, practice illegal acts”
If hyaluronic acid is targeted in the SNCPRE forum, the problem is not directly this product but the use made of it, outside of any legal practice.
In France the law is clear, “only a doctor can make an injection, which is a penetration into the skin”, remember the DGCCRF (general directorate for the repression of fraud). However, “currently, hundreds of injectors, not doctors, practice illegal acts on the population, particularly the youngest and most vulnerable, with great publicity on social networks”, lament the signatories of the rostrum.
And these illegal injectors can now get hyaluronic acid, or other injectable fillers, “for free at pharmacies or online distributors.”
Some also inject “these products, for example to increase the volume of the lips, following pseudo-instructions available in online videos,” they write.
Therefore, control of this product would be a way for doctors to limit and control uncontrolled injections.
“Sometimes victims are disfigured for life”
Because these injections are far from risk-free and the health of clients, gangrene and hospitalizations in intensive care are at stake, which compromise the vital prognosis of young patients.
“Victims are sometimes disfigured for life and mentally broken. They do not dare to denounce, because many times they are victims of physical threats”, they add.
on your site, the health minister It also warns of the “risk of infection” that “exists in the event of non-compliance with the rules of asepsis, as well as the risk of necrosis in the event of a poorly performed injection that breaks or blocks a vessel”.
Several influencers have already been singled out, sometimes multiple times, for promoting injection centers of this type, while the people who practice them are not doctors. But the latter still attract customers, because the prices displayed are much lower than in a doctor.
A law on the regulation of influencers is being examined this week in the National Assembly. The text creates, among other things, the prohibition for an influencer to promote cosmetic surgery.
Source: BFM TV
