Esthetics before essentials. Lucrative practice. Hospital ORs are tied up by MDs for unnecessary cosmetic surgery
Dr. Clifford Albert injects an acrylic gel to treat wrinkles at the Montreal Institute for Laser Surgery. To have patients on waiting lists, when procedures that are not medically required are being done in hospital ORs, is "obscene," Albert says.
Plastic surgeons and other doctors are using up the scarce resources of Montreal hospitals to conduct hundreds of medically unnecessary procedures - facelifts, tummy tucks and breast implants. This highly lucrative practice, as a Gazette investigation has found, is straining already lengthy waiting lists for essential procedures like cataract removal and even emergency cancer surgery. Although the practice is technically not illegal, critics charge that it does raise ethical concerns about whether public hospitals should be exploited for private for-profit esthetic services. Cosmetic surgery has grown into a colossal business in Quebec, raking in an estimated $600 million annually. Many Montreal plastic surgeons earn more than $500,000 a year - most of it from increasingly popular cosmetic procedures like liposuction.
- copyright THE GAZETTE/Canada.com -

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CNN© posted by Patrick Hudson in Albuquerque, NM, USA on 1/24/2004 09:43:00 AM