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Where Beauty Meets Medicine®
The boundary between beauty therapy and cosmetic medicine (or aesthetic medicine) is slowly becoming blurred. Although once it was obvious that hair removal by waxing was clearly a beauty treatment and a face-lift under general anaesthetic was clearly a medical treatment, the aesthetic or cosmetic market has changed.
There have been several reasons for this.
There are now a great many treatments that can be performed in a clinical room or salon using the latest technologies that can be highly effective. However a lot of these have some risks associated with them and also need specialist training. The blurring between pure beauty and pure cosmetic or aesthetic medicine is typified by what is called the cosmetic pyramid. This is shown below.
The bottom of the pyramid is full of very low risk and usually very low cost procedures, of which there are a vast number performed every year. Most of them can be performed by people with a fairly basic training - although like all things, to get good results, a good training in that area as well as a good practice is essential.
As the procedures go up the pyramid, the numbers performed every year in the UK drop away but the risks, costs and the training required to perform them successfully also increase. By the very top of the pyramid, there are relatively few procedures performed per year for a very high cost, with a significant risk profile and by very specialised practitioners (usually surgeons or medically qualified personnel.)
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