The cosmetic surgery industry is not doing enough to protect patients, a group of independent experts in Britain said in a report released Wednesday.
This plea for stricter rules comes a year after a European breast implant scandal revealed thousands of women were receiving cheap, rupture-prone silicone implants.
The group of experts, assigned by the UK Department of Health, reviewed how cosmetic procedures are regulated and concluded that skin fillers like Botox should be made available by prescription only. They also recommended that surgeons and other cosmetic industry professionals who inject Botox be adequately qualified to perform skin-filling procedures.
"Anyone can give you a [skin] filler anytime, anywhere," said Bruce Keogh, the review's leader and medical director of the National Health Service.
"This is a bizarre situation."
Dr. Dan Poulter, a senior minister in the Department of Health, agrees that the time has come for the government to implement stricter regulations.
"There is a significant risk of people falling into the hands of cowboy firms or individuals or individuals whose only aim to make a quick profit," he said.
And Keogh argued in the report that a patient undergoing a Botox procedure "has no more protection and redress than someone buying a ballpoint pen."
Side effects from skin-filling procedures encompass scarring, infection and blindness.
And these procedures account for 75 percent of the cosmetic surgery industry, driving the experts' plea for stricter rules.
"It is our view that dermal fillers are a crisis waiting to happen," the experts concluded in the report.
Regulatory procedures regarding cosmetic surgical procedures in the UK are more lenient in comparison to other countries like Denmark that requires practitioners to be registered with a national health board.
And out of the 190 types of skin fillers on the European market, just 14 have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration---according to Keogh.
The government plans to respond to the report this summer, according to Poulter.