This was published 4 years before
Four weeks after Sanja Kukic’s first breast implant surgery, she knew something was wrong.
“It’s been seven years since then. And I still don’t feel normal.”
Ms Kukic, now 29, said she spent more than $30,000 on implant surgery and a brachioplasty, or arm lift, with a plastic surgeon in Sydney in 2014 that caused “irreversible damage”.
“It was supposed to improve my happiness, but I had an open wound from the lift that lasted eight months and implants that shifted. It wasn’t worth it,” she says, noting that after complaints of pain and discomfort, the plastic surgeon stopped returning my calls.
She has since had multiple revision surgeries and scar tissue removal with a plastic surgeon to try to “fix everything that went wrong.”
Ms Kukic is among around 150 women each year who undergo breast implant removal at reconstructive surgeon Anand Deva’s Sydney practice. many due to tearing and hardening of the tissues around the implants.
“Cosmetic surgery is a mirage in Australia. There is no specific specialty and so any doctor who wishes to claim the title of cosmetic surgeon can do so,” said Professor Deva, who is also head of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Macquarie University.
Under Australian law, any qualified doctor can call themselves a cosmetic surgeon, while plastic surgeons have received at least 12 years of medical and surgical training.
“We need transparency and certification to protect unsuspecting patients,” he said.
Professor Deva said it was critical the government created a pathway for the formal certification and safe practice of cosmetic surgery to be managed by the regulator, the Australian Health Practitioners Regulatory Agency.
“Because a cosmetic surgeon can practice without needing proper certification, it’s difficult to impose regulation on something that doesn’t exist within the regulatory framework.”
Last month a joint survey by The Sydney Morning Herald, THE Age and ABC’s Four Corners has revealed a list of disturbing practices at celebrity cosmetic surgeon Daniel Lanzer’s clinics, including allegations of serious health and safety breaches and improper procedures.
It prompted calls from leading medical groups, including the Royal Australian College of Surgeons and the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, for restrictions on where doctors can market themselves as cosmetic surgeons.
In November 2019 health ministers agreed to restrict the title ‘surgeon’, but the laws have not yet changed.
At Enunciate This month Patrick Tansley, president of the Australian College of Cosmetic Surgery and Medicine, said the college called for regulation and accreditation for all plastic surgeons as “there is for any other specialist field of practice”.
“All physicians who perform cosmetic surgery would be required to meet a national accreditation standard and be on a registry of cosmetic surgeons. The standard would require basic training, qualifications, competencies and recertification specific to cosmetic surgery,” Dr. Tansley wrote.
A decade ago, about 6000 women a year in Australia had breast implants, Dr Deva said, now it’s up to 20,000, with about 75 per cent for cosmetic augmentation and 25 per cent for reconstruction after cancer treatment.
This month the Cancer Institute NSW launched a major surveillance project to monitor and track breast implants used for reconstructive surgery in women who have had breast cancer, using extensive datasets.
Sarah McGill, deputy chief executive of the institute, said using 20 years of data would help better understand patient outcomes after breast cancer reconstruction with implants.
“The Therapeutic Goods Administration strongly encourages consumers and healthcare professionals to report all problems associated with medical devices, including breast implants,” he said.
Data from the Australian Breast Device Registry shows that the most common complications are capsular contracture (contraction of breast tissue around the implant) and malposition (some movement of the breast device within the breast tissue), but the overall risk of these complications is low.
Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration took several new actions to introduce warnings and a checklist to inform patients about the risks and side effects of implants.
In 2020, Australia’s medical device watchdog banned the use of three breast implants amid concerns that the highly textured implants carry an increased risk of breast implant-related anaplastic large cell lymphoma.
“The pandemic saw a drop in the number of cases, as with other cancers, but now we are seeing a recovery,” Professor Deva said.
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