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SINGAPORE: From November, private doctors performing liposuction - the surgical removal of fat deposits from the body - will have to be assessed by a new five-member accreditation committee before getting the go-ahead to perform the procedure.
Liposuction was previously unregulated, leading to calls by plastic surgeons on the Health Ministry to tighten rules on the procedure. Liposuction is believed to be the second most popular cosmetic procedure in Singapore, after double-eyelid surgery.
The accreditation committee comprises three plastic surgeons, a dermatologist and a general practitioner.
The committee will accredit doctors based on a set of criteria. These include one year of surgical training in a hospital on procedures.
Doctors must also have observed at least 10 liposuction surgeries under a qualified medical practitioner and performed at least five such procedures under close supervision.
Liposuction clinics must also keep mandatory patient medical records, including reports of adverse outcomes which are required to be submitted to the accreditation committee.
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said: "What is more important is, I think, along the way we are creating quality control system so that every surgery result is documented, so that it can be audited."
Patients must be given at least seven days to consider before any payments or contracts are made. Mr Khaw said the rule was revised to seven days from the proposed 15 days because doctors feel that Singapore has a small market.
Clinics are exempted from imposing this rule on foreigners who come to Singapore specifically for liposuction.
Clinics can only offer the procedure to patients with Body Mass Index of 28 or less and only less than one litre of fat can be removed. Anything bigger than those numbers, the procedure must be done at a hospital with anaesthesia. The same rule applies for lipolysis.
It is also necessary for doctors who perform liposuction to meet among themselves at least quarterly to review and discuss their cases. Such meetings will be chaired by a surgeon or a member of the accreditation committee.
The five-member accreditation committee is chaired by Professor Foo Chee Liam, Singapore General Hospital's (SGH) Senior Consultant at the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery.
The members are Professor Colin Song, head of SGH's Department of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery; Professor Lim Thiam Chye, head of National University Hospital's Division of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery; Dr T Thirumoorthy, a dermatologist; and Dr Tan Kok Leong, a general practitioner.
In an email response on the new regulation, Madam Halimah Yacob, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Health, said: "Now that we have such a regulatory framework, and while we expect better compliance through the peer review process that has been suggested, we also need to ensure compliance through an effective auditing process."
J J Chua, a plastic surgeon, said: "Currently, there's no accreditation. So for anyone, it's a cowboy city. Anyone can do liposuction - you just have to buy the equipment, you just have supposedly attended the seminar, either overseas, local or watch a DVD, and you can do it. So I think having criteria like these will ensure patient safety and proper training as well as practice."
CASE executive director, Seah Seng Choon, said: "I would like to see that the doctors involved in such operations have in place all the rules for patients and brief the patients on all the rules, for example, the cooling period, and tell them about the risks involved. And, perhaps, disclose where they can seek redress if they're not happy with the work done by the doctors themselves."
According to the Health Ministry, over 70 doctors in the private sector have said they are interested to perform liposuction. Only 40 per cent of those are specialists, the rest are general practitioners.
- CNA/ir
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