Cosmetic surgery

Cosmetic surgery is an operation, or invasive medical procedure, undertaken to change their physical appearance for cosmetic rather than medical reasons. Dealing with the results of cosmetic surgery done carelessly can be difficult for victims, particularly if it affects them physically and/or mentally. Patients should have confidence in their cosmetic surgeon, as such it is vital that an individual carries out significant research before choosing a surgeon. 

 

What Is the standard of care?

A cosmetic surgeon is treated the same as any other healthcare professional, and therefore the same principles regarding an owed duty of care apply. This type of surgery should always be on a start-to-finish basis, this means that one practice is responsible for the entire treatment. This means that if there are problems there cannot be a passing-the-buck situation that ends nowhere. Your care expectations start when you walk into the practice and end at the aftercare process. It stands to reason those certain hygienic steps are taken and that the surgeon carries out the procedure with care and skill.

 

Surgeons must possess recognised medical qualifications and have several years of training. Despite this, mistakes can still be made resulting in the patient suffering harm or injury. If it can be demonstrated that the harm or injury was sustained as a result of medical negligence, you may be entitled to compensation. It is important to note that merely being unhappy with the results of cosmetic surgery is insufficient for a claim.

 

Common reasons for a claim

There are various reasons as to why an individual may seek a claim against a surgeon for negligence.

The list is non-exhaustive and includes: -

• Injuries sustained due to or because of the surgical procedure;
• Administration of the incorrect amount of anaesthesia resulting in harm or injury, or serious cases death;
• Errors made during the surgery due to the surgeon performing inadequately;
• Poor care administered before, during or after the surgery; and/or
• Failure to provide the patient with a satisfactory amount of information before the procedure.

 

How we can help

One of the issues with all cosmetic surgery is that the final result may take time to appear due to the duration of the subsidence of bruising / swelling, also the level of improvement may well be subjective, the final result may look great to the general public but the patient may still be mentally unhappy with the result. If there is an obvious issue then there may be a case, if the matter is more subjective (the tip of my nose is not quite pert enough) then you may have to chalk that one down to subjective differences.

 

If there is a clear issue, we would appoint a consultant plastic surgeon to review the work. If they feel that there has been an error then we would forward this information to you and take your instructions. These consultants are privately contracted by us (and therefore their cost would be classed as a disbursement). To quantify the potential claim in regard to mental trauma we would suggest an additional report from our psychological team. We would hope that the other side would agree with our experts’ findings without any further costs or investigations and agree to a series of interim payments followed by a final settlement.

 

The claim will consider two types of damages:

• General damages- this compensates the victim for the pain and suffering endured, and for the loss of enjoyment of life as a result of the negligent act.
• Special damages- this compensates the victim for any personal costs incurred as a result of the negligent act. It can also cover any additional costs required in the future such as remedial surgery to remedy the mistake, mental suffering and so on.

 

To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by taking advantage of our free consultation service, activated by the link at the top of the page, should you wish to start a case the caseworker will send you the suitable payment link. Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our legal team and plastic surgeon and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc.