Through this ban, doctors want to control or at least regulate the growing practice of illegal injections, which can do irreversible damage to patients.
Faced with an “alarming growth of illegal injections” in France for 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.
He 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 for which it provides hydration, elasticity and cohesion”, explains the French Society of Dermatology, but its quantity decreases as one ages. Injections of this product can then make it possible to erase wrinkles, but also to redraw parts of the face, by inflating the lips for example.
This allows “correction ranging from simple skin hydration to the treatment of more or less marked wrinkles, up to the restructuring of volumes.”
“Hundreds of injectors, non-doctors, practice illegal acts”
If hyaluronic acid is targeted in the SNCPRE forum, it is not directly this product that is the problem but rather the use that is made of it, outside of any legal practice.
In France the law is clear, “only a doctor can make an injection, which is a skin break-in”, reminds the DGCCRF (general directorate for the repression of fraud). However, “currently, hundreds of injectors, non-doctors, practice illegal acts on the population, in particular the youngest and most vulnerable, with great publicity on social networks”, deplore the signatories of the tribune .
And these illegal injectors can now obtain hyaluronic acid, or other injectable fillers, “freely in pharmacies or from online distributors”.
Some also inject themselves “these products, for example to increase the volume of the lips, by following pseudo-instructions available on online videos”, they write.
Controlling this product would therefore be a way for doctors to limit and control uncontrolled injections.
“Victims are sometimes disfigured for life”
Because these injections are far from being without risk and the health of the clients is at stake. gangrene and hospitalizations in intensive care, involving the vital prognosis of young patients.
“The victims are sometimes disfigured for life and psychologically broken. They dare not file a complaint, because they are often victims of physical threats”, they add.
On his site, the minister of health also warns of the “risk of infection” which “exists in the event of non-compliance with the rules of asepsis, as well as a risk of necrosis in the case of a poorly performed injection which would rupture or block a vessel” .
Several influencers have already been pinned, sometimes several times, for promoting centers for injections of this type, while the people practicing them are not doctors. But the latter still attract customers, because the prices displayed are much lower than at a doctor’s.
A law on the regulation of influencers is examined this week in the National Assembly. The text creates, among other things, the prohibition for an influencer to promote cosmetic surgery.
