The Health Ministry says: Be careful of unproven ‘non-mainstream’ treatments.
It is called “aesthetic medicine” and aims to help people fix their real or imagined flaws – sagging skin, wringkles and more.
A health Ministry check found more than half Singapore’s general practitioners offering a variety of these treatments. Patients have been lapping them up, even if it means forking out hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Now the ministry has identified several treatments patients should be careful with, including the three below.
a) Mesotherapy – A non-surgical procedure involving tiny injections to break down fat. It claimes to dissolve the fat, carrying it through the blood-stream to be expelled from the body.
b) Skin whitening injections - Injections aimed at reducing blemishes like ache scars, wrinkles, and chicken pox marks.
c) Gwoth harmone treatments – It replaces testosterone using either injections or creams applied to the skin. Human growth hormones are then delivered through micro-injections.
It advises patients to ask their doctors for evidence that these treatments work and to check if there are any side effects.
Some countries do not allow some of the treatments available here.
The Singapore Medical Council is investigating six doctors, including a specialist, over aesthetic treatments. KK women’s and Children’s Hospital said it dropped a plan to offer the fat-busting mesotherapy procedure at its aesthetic centre.
Department head Vincent Yeow, a pleastic surgeon, said: “We realised there was no scientific basis and teh results are not consistent.
TST, Mar 19 2008
