James Meikle 

Breast implant patients ‘should be registered’

MPs urge action to make it easier to trace patients who have had breast implants or other cosmetic surgery
  
  

Breast implant
A register of breast implant patients could be considered in response to a scare over faulty products made in France. Photograph: Sebastien Nogier/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Sebastien Nogier/AFP/Getty Images

Health ministers and officials may consider registers of patients who have received breast implants and other forms of cosmetic surgery in the wake of the scandal involving French manufacturers of faulty implants.

Influential backbench Tories are demanding action to make it easier to trace patients to prevent a repeat of the recent scare despite reassurance from the chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, last week that women with silicone implants made by the now defunct Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) should "not be unduly worried".

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, and officials are to discuss the implications of the furore which led to the French government saying its 30,000 citizens with the implants should have them removed – and that the state would pay – while Davies insisted that there was no need for "routine removal" among the estimated 40,000 Britons affected.

Stephen Dorrell, chairman of the Commons health select committee and a former health secretary, wants manufacturers and suppliers to be compelled to keep records of who received their products as a part of their licence to operate in Britain, the Times reported.

Dorrell told the paper: "This is a product being put into a human body – it should have a proper audit trail for where and when it is used."

Daniel Poulter, MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich and a doctor, wanted tougher checks on the cosmetic surgery industry. "In other areas we have very tight control on medicines," he said. "We know they have to be safe. But a lot of the cosmetic industry is completely unregulated. It's something that slips through the gap."

Poulter, also a member of the health select committee, said a "proper paper trail of care" was essential. "There should be proper checks on who's carrying out these procedures, how they are being carried out and whether they are suitable."

A report last year by senior doctors working for the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death, set up by the medical royal colleges, was extremely critical of cosmetic surgery clinics, citing inexperienced surgeons, poor standards and bad practice. The Royal College of Surgeons is expected to produce recommendations for better standards by the summer.

Hundreds of women in the UK are already attempting to sue clinics where they had surgery for PIP implants, alleging health complications that had emerged before the scale of the problems with the company's products became widely known.

Venezuela has followed France in offering free surgery for the removal of PIP implants.

 

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