Cosmetic surgeons are still butchering Australian women

Jean Huang died following a botched medical procedure at a Sydney beauty salon.

When will women learn that there is a huge difference between a plastic surgeon and a cosmetic surgeon.  There is no comparison, you take a huge risk going to a so-called cosmetic surgeon when what you need is a plastic surgeon.

A plastic surgeon is a doctor who has trained to perform cosmetic procedures for approximately 10-12 years.

The term 'cosmetic surgeon' can be used by anyone who has completed a basic medical degree in university, with no specific surgical training.

Associate Professor Gazi Hussain, Vice President of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, has been trying to do something about this crisis for the past 20 years.

"It’s very sad and it’s very frustrating, we’ve been trying to get people’s attention about this issue for 20 years and as the number of surgeries increases, so do the complications."

A 30 year old mother saw a Facebook ad for affordable breast augmentation and assumed because it was an Australian doctor, it was a safe choice.

The procedure took place in June of 2015 and at first, Humm says everything seemed fine.

"They were healing really well. I wasn’t in much pain and they looked really good."

About two weeks into her recovery, however, Humm started to feel pain in her left breast.

"It became red and I thought it was part of the healing process, then I was drying myself after having a shower on a Friday night and I felt something dripping down my stomach.

"I looked down and I had fluid coming out of my left breast. It had swelled up and the wound itself was weeping."

 Her doctor took a swab and once again assured her it was a normal part of the healing process.

As time passed, the wound on her left breast went black, and later that day something strange happened – “It was silicone, I was actually pulling it out of my breast with my fingers.

Her doctor told her it was 'impossible' for silicone to be coming out, so she sent him a photo. At that stage, she alleges her doctor began freaking out too.

"He told me to come and see him next week, but I couldn’t wait, so I went to my local hospital. They’d never seen anything like it."

Doctors at the hospital said her wound looked like she'd been 'butchered' and that her doctor had done 'a horrible job'.

They recommended she go back to her original doctor to have the left implant taken out, which she did for an additional cost of $2000.

Still, her left breast developed yet another infection.

"Eventually it calmed down and my doctor told me to come back in a few months and pay another $2000 to have another one put in. I decided not to. There was no way I was going back to him," she said.

"I had a saggy breast with nothing in it and one with an implant in it that was a horrible job.”

The mother-of-four had the right implant removed just three weeks ago, after two years of living with mismatched, lopsided breasts.

It wasn't until she made contact with other dissatisfied patients of the same doctor on Facebook that she discovered there has been multiple complaints made against him.

Information that would have come in handy before her disastrous procedure.

Nicole Montgomery is a registered nurse who founded Trusted Surgeons, a non-profit organisation that helps Australians find qualified surgeons to perform complex surgical procedures.

Montgomery assisted in finding Humm a qualified surgeon to remove the remaining implant.  The 38-year-old previously worked at the Cosmetic Institute which is the subject of a class action lawsuit since September 2017.

Montgomery says it was her time at the Cosmetic Institute that made her aware of how many unqualified doctors are performing invasive, cosmetic procedures.

"If you’re a specialist plastic surgeon, you’ve been through the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons," she said. "If you’re a cosmetic surgeon, you may or may not have had any formal training at all."