Cosmetic surgery is a very complicated combination of art and science. Every patient and every doctor is unique and so is each Doctor-patient relatienship. The big difference with other forms of medicine is that the patient makes the decision of wether to treat or not and of the kind of treatment to be used. As a result, the medical tradition of keeping patients largely in the dark about their treatment options became untenaable in the 1990's. The concommittant explosion of information via the internet mainly, resulted in a rapid spread of both myths and facts.
The pseudo-scientific approach of commercially driven companies and practicionars led to a puzzling variety of well-intended or maliciously driven wrong information on absolutely everything on the subject. Patient forums have become littered with pseudo-patients who post messages for or against treatments, institutuions and practicionars, not rarely paid by providers of cosmetic surgery.
This stands in stark contrast with the paucity of scientific data on the subject. There simply are no funds anywhere in the world to objectively study the outcome of the various cosmetic surgery approaches. This makes the judgement of the various treatments available extremely difficult, not just for the prospective patients, but also in the uneventful circumstances where the outcome has been unfavourable and one wants the question answered where any fault may have to be attributed.
