Knit brows turn up at docs’ meet over cosmetic surgery

When aesthetic and cosmetic surgeons meet, knit brows and faces disfigured in frustration are the least one can expect to turn up.

They did, however, when the surgeons met here last Oct. 15 to protest a Senate bill that they said promotes “monopoly” in the practice of cosmetic surgery.

“Medicine is an art. Nobody owns or should claim monopoly (over a specific branch),” said Dr. John Cenica, president of the Philippine Academy of Aesthetic Surgery (Paas).

Cenica, in an interview during the surgeons’ conference here, was reacting to Senate Bill No. 1469 “that seeks to limit the practice of cosmetic dermatology to licensed and qualified physicians with residency training in dermatology or plastic surgery.”

The bill, filed in the Senate in 2010, sought to penalize violators with fines ranging from P50,000 to P200,000 or imprisonment from six months to five years.

“It is confusing. If it becomes a law, it may set a bad precedent,” Cenica said.

The bill defines a cosmetic dermatological procedure as similar to plastic surgery “done to individuals by reshaping or refining normal structures of the face and body.”

It seeks to regulate the establishment of clinics that offer cosmetic surgery which, the bill said, “are sprouting like mushrooms.”

Cenica said dermatology deals mainly with skin diseases, while plastic surgery deals with repairing burn injuries or facial deformities.

Aesthetic and cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, deals with “enhancing beauty.” Its most popular procedures are liposuction, breast augmentation and rhinoplasty.

“We are licensed medical doctors in the first place. We have studied and trained in surgery only that we chose to specialize on aesthetic surgery,” Cenica said.

He said since universities have yet to offer courses on aesthetic and cosmetic surgeries, Paas and other organizations have been offering workshops and seminars to surgeons who wish to pursue the field.

Paas and other organizations—Philippine Society of Liposuction Surgery Inc. (PSLSI), International Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, Pan Pacific Aesthetic Institute Foundation Inc. and Philippine Society of Cosmetic Surgery—signed the “World Philippine Declaration in Aesthetic Cosmetic Surgery” at the conference in this city on Oct. 15.

It was the second international assembly of cosmetic surgeons. A similar declaration was signed in Tokyo in 2000.

“This constitutes a declaration of our rights to practice exclusively the act of cosmetic surgery,” the surgeons declared.

“First of all, you must be a surgeon. When you’re a surgeon then you know the anatomy of the body. You then go around the world to study and research,” said Italian aesthetic surgeon Dr. Giorgio Fischer.

Fischer, also known as the father of liposuction, said there is a “continuing fight” between plastic surgeons, whose practice dates back to World War I, and cosmetic surgeons. He said aesthetic and cosmetic surgeons should enjoy the same respect accorded plastic surgeons.

“Everybody wants beauty. It’s a human instinct,” said PSLSI president Dr. Corazon Collantes-Jose.

She said aesthetic and cosmetic surgery started in the Philippines in the 1970s and demand has grown by “leaps and bounds.”