Cosmetic Surgery; How the Market has Changed

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In the cosmetic surgery community, the focus is on how the industry as a whole has changed over recent years. To help put this into perspective, it is two years since Sir Bruce Keogh did an investigation into PIP breast implants, and a year since he published a report on how to improve the cosmetic surgery industry. However, despite the fact that these reviews and reports were made, not much as appeared to change in the transparency of what the public knows about the clinical treatments of cosmetic surgery.

The issue arises from the 'miscommunication' between specialists, supporting bodies, and the cosmetic companies themselves. Although Keynote annually reports back findings from the cosmetic surgery sector, their findings tend to differ from that of Mintel. Furthermore, although leading companies, such as MYA, openly present their surgery procedures data, many other companies are reluctant to follow suit for fear it'll weaken them as viable competition.

Although governing bodies like the Competition Commission have been chosen to look into private health care and its connection with cosmetic surgery, it isn't a simple or easy task to achieve. According to the figures, cosmetic surgery accounts for no more than 5% of five private hospital activities overall, which of course means that only a fraction of the true activity within this section is shown. As a consequence of these findings, the Competition Commission has demanded more transparency from private healthcare providers. Despite the fact that there's still a long way to go before the reports and records are seamlessly produced, the results appear to be positive.

Many of the contributing parties to this project, of which mya.co.uk is one company, are trying to not only reflect the truth of their surgical procedures, but to also provide information on any clinical complications that have taken place during the allotted time period. Although not every party is willing to share such information at this time, it does help to collate a series of national averages. What this does in turn is to produce patients with a better list of variables, and allow them to make a sound choice of what they've seen from the records. For example, although a surgeon may successfully carry out a series of breast enlargements, it doesn't mean they're necessarily skilled enough to carry out a nose reshaping. 

Even though there is still a lot of room for improvement within this sector, it is clear that much work is under way to ensure that more objective decisions can be made by the patients thanks to reliable resources about the cosmetic surgery being performed.