Young, pretty and “over-treated”: this is how aesthetic medicine has become an addiction

SIME's alarm: "It is now a trend among very young people. Be careful of home treatments"

ROME – “There is an increase in over-treated patients, especially at a young age. And this is not good”.
This was announced by the president of the Italian Medical Society Aesthetics, Dr. Emanuele Bartoletti, interviewed by Dire on the topic. But can we talk about young people’s dependence on cosmetic surgery or aesthetic medicine? “Perhaps not from surgery, yes from aesthetic medicine – replied the expert – We could talk about addiction determined in turn by dependence on social media. Young people turn to aesthetic medicine with the desire to adhere to certain aesthetic models, but above all to show that they have done it, like those who buy a branded dress and want to flaunt it aesthetic medicine has become a trend, 16/17 or 18 year old girls see their peers posting on social media. their new lips done and they want to do it too. It has become a status symbol, if you don’t do it you’re ‘unlucky’. It’s a time when you have to pay a lot of attention to these things and above all an appeal to parents: don’t endorse the desire and. do not give fake lips to your daughters.”

Bartoletti therefore launches an alarm on ‘home’ treatments of aesthetic medicine or those carried out by non-expert doctors: “It is a very dangerous trend. Just yesterday I received an email from a young girl- she said that two years ago, at a friend’s house, she had the Hyaluron Pen (a device used for filling treatments without needles, ed.) which literally left ‘bumps’ on her lips. This girl, even today, still has it. in the morning he wakes up with very swollen lips. Luckily the Hyaluron Pen has been withdrawn from the market, but there are other treatments of this type.
We must try to fight this ‘undergrowth'”.

Recently it seems that we are talking more frequently about aesthetic medicine treatments, which are less invasive, and less about cosmetic surgery. Is it just a perception? “Aesthetic medicine and aesthetic surgery travel on two parallel tracks. There are no declines in the percentages of aesthetic surgeries performed in Italy – the SIME president said – but perhaps there is not such a constant and exponential increase as in aesthetic medicine” .

At the moment there is an increased demand “both because patients want to feel and see themselves better, as a completion of psychophysical well-being – explained Doctor Bartoletti – and because the offer from doctors has increased. And this, at times, is a risky factor: unfortunately many doctors practice aesthetic medicine without being trained or perhaps having only taken a weekend course provided by some company, but this does not mean being aesthetic doctors, it means being injectors. These doctors, who have not attended four-year courses or a university master’s degree, do not have the sufficient background to be able to establish whether a patient has an indication or not, they satisfy their requests – he concluded – often and willingly absolutely unnecessary”