"Eternal Youth"

Cosmectic surgery has been on the news recently, due to the breast implant scandal in France and NHS publishing a report in this issue on March 2013. The number of patients increases every year and the NHS request for a safer surgery.

Cosmetic surgery consists in operating so the patient will look better. It started as a method to treat bodies damaged by an accident (Fire, Car accident etc.). However it became so popular when celebrities started to used looking for the “eternal youth”. There many different surgeries, some of the most known are liposuction, breast implant, rhinoplasty and Botox. All of them are used as cosmetic surgery.

Botox is the most recent one. It comes from a bacterium called “Clostridium Botulinum”, it is from the same branch as tetanus and it´s one of the most poisonous toxin known. It has been used in medicine since the 80´s and the American FDA (Food and Drugs Administration) approved its cosmetic use in 2002, pretty recently. That is the reason why its secondary effects still unknown. Nevertheless, Botox paralyzes nerves which connect with muscles so that it can produce cardiac arrest. Before this cosmetic procedure, it was used to alleviate muscle pains and to treat illnesses such as torticolis and squint, when the muscle must be relaxed.

Interviewing Doctor Guillermo Debén, haematologist at University Hospital of A Coruña and chairman of the scientific committee of the Spanish Association Against Cancer, said that Botox first procedure, medical, is more defensible in terms of its application. “Cosmetic use is a luxury treatment”, he said.

On the report due in March 2013 by the NHS one of the points covered is the first consultation and the information given. Doctor Debén said that patients are conscious and warned by the risks, as long it is done by a specialist. According to BBC article, most of the cosmetic surgery is done privately instead of NHS, which increases the risks of the action. Due to its price, underground surgery increased in recent years. Dr. Debén confirmed that does not exists guarantee and the risks are bigger at clandestine clinics.

This kind of surgery is mainly applied to women, but man have just started exploring it.  Males most used methods are liposuction and blepharoplasty. 

This aesthetic passion is not recent, in the Ancient Greece, citizens were looking for beauty. However, it was a different term; they understood the integral beauty as the combination of mind and body.  Dr Deben also said that ‘Botox has been democratized, in one way or another anyone can access to it’.

He concluded that the fact that ‘the people take care of their body is a progress of the society; however, the cult of beauty in itself is a mistake’.