“More and more adverse effects and more cases of facial necrosis are being reported because aesthetic treatments are being performed by people who do not have anatomical knowledge of the face, who therefore have a high risk of puncturing a blood vessel when they apply injectables, causing lifelong sequelae to that person”.
The president and vice president of the Spanish Society of Aesthetic Medicine (SEME), Juan Antonio López and Sergio Fernández, respectively, have taken advantage of the presentation of the report on Perception and use of aesthetic medicine in Spain 2023 to launch an alert about the high lack of knowledge that citizens have about aesthetic medicine treatments (even those who have undergone them), how this facilitates high rates of intrusion in a booming activity that causes public health problems.
According to this report, 22% of the population admits that they do not know what aesthetic medicine is and the rest often do not know how to distinguish the treatments that a beautician can perform from those that involve a medical act, such as injectables or other treatments. minimally invasive techniques, and those associated with surgery.
What’s more, although the majority of respondents who have had some aesthetic treatment know where they had it done, there are 6% who do not know how to indicate what type of professional applied it or their training.
In this sense, it stands out that there are more than 28% of people who admit to having received touch-ups or aesthetic techniques in hairdressers (10%), at home (8.3%), in a physiotherapy center, in a gym or at the dentist.
“We have detected that people do fillers at home, in hotels and even in the bathrooms of a cafeteria; they do the filler as if they were buying mascara, and it is not the same as injecting a product into the face that can have adverse reactions. and cause lifelong consequences,” López emphasized.
The SEME representatives explained that there are people who buy hyaluronic acid online “without any knowledge or control over the traceability of that product, whether it has been exposed to the sun; then they watch tutorials on YouTube on how to apply it and inject it,” without know that this is a medical procedure that requires informed consent, which must be applied by someone with accredited training in aesthetic medicine, who assesses the risks and carries out controls.
As an example, they explained that if a filler is injected at home, that person will not have the drug to counteract the possible adverse effect, while the doctor, even if a blood vessel was punctured, would have resources to treat it and prevent the area from becoming necrotic. .
The doctors explained that they see more and more cases in their consultations of people who have gone to a beauty center to have a touch-up done and, since it has gone wrong but they do not take responsibility, they go to them to have a small treatment and then complain to the clinic that they know does have liability insurance.
“Administrations should take into account that this intrusion, in addition to generating health problems, ends up having an impact on public health, because many people end up going to the emergency room when they experience adverse effects” due to poorly performed aesthetic treatment, commented the president of SEME.
The study on the use of aesthetic medicine indicates that 47% of the Spanish population has undergone some treatment of this type in 2023. And, when comparing users with the data they have from 2017, they observe that demand for aesthetic medicine has increased. all among the youngest group, between 16 and 25 years old, and among those over 45. Specifically, the percentage of those under 25 years of age who have had some aesthetic treatment has gone from 14% to 20%, being the modification of Lips, cheekbones and nose are the most requested touch-ups from the age of 18.
Among the older group, the demand for treatments has grown by ten percentage points, especially because more and more members of the baby boom generation are undergoing facial restructuring, infiltrating hyaluronic acid, undergoing laser or pulsed light treatments to alleviate photoaging of the skin or treatments to lose weight.
Altogether, the five most in-demand aesthetic medicine treatments last year were IPL (intense pulsed light), fillers with hyaluronic acid, mesotherapy, PRP (platelet-rich plasma) and toxin, according to data from the Spanish Society of Aesthetic Medicine.
