MADRID (dpa) – With a light step Debora Catalan walked into a Madrid clinic to get fat removed from her thighs. But instead of coming back thinner, she was brought out as a corpse.
The case of the 36-year-old historian has increased awareness of the dangers of cosmetic surgery in Spain where it is experiencing a boom.The rapid rise in demand has caused illegal clinics to mushroom, and there have been several recent cases of women dying or suffering health damage.Spain is one of the countries where people are the keenest to get their faces or bodies redone under the knife. Some 300,000 Spaniards spent 900 million euros on cosmetic operations and related procedures last year.The number of clinics has increased 150 per cent since 1997, and the sector is growing by 15 per cent annually.The procedures range from face lifts to fixing drooping eyelids. Liposuctions – procedures in which fat is sucked from the body – and breast implants are the most popular.Debora Catalan was believed to have had a liposuction, though the doctor in question claimed that she had only had a milder procedure which did not require anaesthesia.Not only women, but increasing numbers of men and even adolescent girls resort to cosmetic surgery to look more attractive.The rapid growth of the sector has created a legal vacuum. The Spanish legislation only recognizes the speciality of plastic surgery, but the country only has some 600 plastic surgeons while about 2,000 “aesthetic surgeons” have got their qualifications abroad.Doctors with dubious qualifications perform operations at clandestine clinics. It is estimated that 60 per cent of cosmetic clinics do not meet sanitary requirements.“They only want to operate a lot and fast in order to buy yachts,” said Carlos Sardinero, a lawyer defending the rights of medical patients.The potential financial rewards have led to a lot of misleading publicity, which manipulates women’s insecurities about their looks and promises miraculous changes overnight.“We have the best that you need for getting rid of fat: a liposuction,” for the price of around 4,000 dollars, a reporter of the daily El Pais was told at a Madrid clinic.Soothing music played in the waiting room which featured magazines showing pictures of whippet-thin models and a basket of sugarless candies.The results, however, are not always what women expect. Debora Catalan, who was believed to have died of an allergic reaction to some medical substance, was the second woman to pass away in Madrid during a cosmetic procedure within four months.Other kinds of problems have also been associated with such procedures in the recent years. The face of one model was disfigured and another woman was left with deformed breasts.A third woman is suffering from constant stomach pains after undergoing a liposuction to get a flat belly, and a fourth caught a lung embolism which almost killed her.Another woman was left in a coma recently in the southern city of Cordoba.“This is not as harmless a fashion as it appears,” said Carmen Flores of the Association in Defence of the Patient. She estimates that 5,000 Spaniards are victims of malpractice every year.Cosmetic surgeons stress that the vast majority of the procedures are safe, with only two per cent going wrong.Yet surgery always involves a risk, and one should not undergo a cosmetic operation or similar procedure unless one has a serious malformation, the daily El Mundo advised.Such counsel is unlikely to put an end to the quest for perfect beauty and eternal youth.In the meantime, the government is considering measures to ban lawless clinics and to create a common set of qualifications for all those who specialize in cosmetic operations.
