But one thing that many people are not too aware of is the relatively poor state of the regulation here in the UK for cosmetic surgery. Don’t get me wrong, there is regulation; but we have all learned from the PIP breast implant scandal that there is nowhere near enough protection for people who have suffered due to negligence in the cosmetic surgery industry. There are no group insurance schemes for when a clinic goes in to liquidation (of which some have purposefully chosen this route to avoid paying out!) and clearly there is not enough being done to make sure that products used in the body are continually tested.
Anyway, breast implants aside, where do you stand when it comes to needing legal advice or representation for a plastic surgery claim? Do you have the right to claim compensation when something has not turned out the way it was meant to?
What we need to do first is examine whether you have a potential claim or not. The same principles apply for cosmetic surgery that do with other forms of claiming for compensation. There has to be negligence for you to make a claim. Negligence is typically born from a mistake, or something that was unexpected. There is a big difference between suffering due to an inherent risk and suffering because someone has made an error.
So whether you have a claim or not normally boils down to whether your suffering has been caused due to a problem that was perhaps not excepted. Some common examples are:
- Soft tissue damage from a surgeon being too aggressive when performing the surgery (which surprisingly is quite a well-known problem).
- A mistake that leads to a complication – such as failing to stitch a wound up correctly, or cutting something they shouldn’t have during the operation.
- Failure to advise of potential side effects or failures. All surgery carries inherent risks, so there is a duty to advise you about any potential complications or risks you are putting yourself at. Normally the paperwork involves is quite thorough to cover themselves for this sort of thing.
- Miss-advising you about what treatment or procedure would be best suited for your particular problem.
When we make a claim for compensation, we instruct a suitable expert to provide us with a report that confirms the extent of your suffering and can also help to confirm if there is a claim to answer for. If our expert agrees that you have suffered due to negligence, there evidence can be used to help bolster a potential claim.
For specialist advice about making a claim for plastic surgery compensation, call us now on 0800 634 75 75 today.