Cosmetic treatment booms in Scotland with 20 per cent rise
Glasgow has become the boom city in the UK for cosmetic procedures, with as many as one in ten of the population prepared to seek treatments such as Botox injections to improve their appearance.
Demand for artificially plumped up faces, liposuctioned tummies and augmented breasts is growing by up to 20 per cent a year in Scotland. While demand has slowed in London and the south, the growth in the market, particularly Glasgow, has remained high and as a sign of the times, the Harley Medical Group, the UK’s largest cosmetic chain, last week opened their first clinic north of the Border.
Transform, one of the other 12 big cosmetic centres operating in Glasgow, released figures to The Times yesterday showing that in the current financial year its facial and abdominal procedures in Glasgow were up 66 per cent on 2009. Surgical procedures in Scotland were up 16 per cent.
Precise numbers of patients are hard to come by because the sector is unregulated. There are estimated to be at least another 50 small, shop-based businesses in Glasgow offering walk-in cosmetic procedures of all kinds.Mel Braham, the chairman of the Harley Medical Group, said the decision to expand north came after Scottish patients travelling to Newcastle and Manchester expressed demand.
“We have been amazed at the amount of inquiries. It’s been almost overwhelming. Our Glasgow clinic is getting 400-500 inquiries a month.”
Simon Connolly, the Scottish representative of the British Association of Cosmetic Doctors and director of the Regency Medical Clinic in Glasgow, said Botox treatment — about £200 for one treatment to remove frown lines — is by far the most popular medical procedure among Scots.
Breast augmentation, costing about £4,300, remains the most popular surgical procedure. But the clinics now offer an array of treatments including laser resurfacing, mole removal, injections of filler for lines and wrinkles, skin peels, birthmark removal and tattoo removal.
Other popular procedures are liposuction, rhinoplasty, the removal of male breasts, and women having their breasts uplifted after breast-feeding.
Research conducted by the Harley group found that Scots are five times more likely to have cosmetic surgery than the average resident of the UK; 5 per cent of Scottish men and women say they would have, or have already had cosmetic surgery, while 10 per cent would opt for non-surgical solutions, such as Botox.
Dr Connolly said: “Cosmetic medicine has taken off exponentially in Scotland in the last five years. England saw the growth over the previous five years but Scotland has now taken over and it’s where the boom is.”
He said demand was much greater in Glasgow than in Edinburgh. “There’s still an East-West split. Edinburgh does tend to be more conservative, more hunting, shooting, fishing and the arts, whereas Glasgow is into fast living and style. I have a clinic in both cities and I see the difference.”
Kimberley Skinner was 52 when she woke up one morning and decided she wanted to have a breast enlargement. Always conscious of being flat-chested, she breast-fed her three children and had been left, as she put it, “with nothing”.
Although she was scared of needles and pain, and it was a big operation, carried out at a Transform private hospital, Mrs Skinner, now 53, found the process was easy. She went from a 36A to a 36D. “To be honest, I woke up, and I had no pain. It was easy. A week later I was out riding my horse.”
Mrs Skinner, from Falkirk, said: “I did the operation for me. My husband really wasn’t worried. This was not about looking like Jordan, this was about feeling good about myself.”
Source: April 1, 2010 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7083517.ece
