The chilling cosmetic practices carried out by “Wild West operators” in some of Britain’s beauty salons were today exposed in a shocking investigation.
Raw footage shows a beautician continuing to crudely suck fat from a client’s cheek using a “suction wand” – a long metal tube that pierces the skin – even though she is clearly in pain.
Cameras also capture the practitioner admitting that she only damaged “two nerves” and “one artery” during the hundreds of other procedures she performed.
All of the hard-hitting clips were secretly captured by an undercover reporter who had signed up for a one-day training course at Luxury Medical Aesthetics in Clapham, south-west London.
Experts today criticized the “unbelievable” and “disgusting” practices found in the ITV News investigation.
Doctors also warned Britons contemplating non-surgical procedures to choose carefully and only opt for experienced professionals.
During the training course on ‘fat reduction’ procedures, which cost £1,500, students were told about the different treatments before a client arrived just half an hour later.
He undercover footage shows a beautician doing an incision on a client’s jawline, before beginning to remove fat with the ‘suction wand’ by dipping it up and down under their skin.
Footage shows a beautician continuing to crudely suction fat from a client’s cheek using a “suction wand” – a long metal tube that pierces the skin – even though she is clearly in pain.
Cameras also capture the practitioner admitting that she only damaged “two nerves” and “one artery” during the hundreds of other procedures she performed.
The client, who has only received local anesthesia, is clearly in pain, but the procedure continues anyway.
“If we damage the nerves on one side, we are very, very careful with the other,” the coach says.
Before briefly handing the instruments to the course students, he also tells them that during the procedures he has only damaged “two nerves” and “one artery.”
The undercover reporter She apologized and left before she was invited to join.
Despite this, she passed the course and left with a certificate from Luxury Medical Aesthetics.
The footage is part of a year-long investigation into unregulated cosmetic surgery for a new ITV documentary, ‘Britain’s Backstreet Surgery Scandal’.
The clinic later did not respond to safety concerns raised by ITV News when contacted.
When they also approached the owner outside her salon, she also did not answer any questions.
Experts today criticized the “incredible” and “disgusting” practices exposed by the investigation.
Consultant plastic surgeon Professor Iain Whitaker said: “It’s incredible how he can be allowed to do this, without any training or medical background.”
Consultant plastic surgeon Professor Iain Whitaker said: “It’s incredible how he can be allowed to do this, without any training or medical background.”
‘To say that they will continue after damaging nerves on one side, they are just not thinking about the patient, is incredible.
“The truth is that it disgusts me, to be honest. I’ve been a doctor for over 22 years and I never thought in my life I’d see something like this.’
In the UK, there is no regulation preventing non-doctors from carrying out these procedures, while doctors face strict regulation by the General Medical Council (GMC).
But a separate freedom of information request by ITV News also found there have been 1,193 ambulance calls to businesses with “beauty” or “aesthetics” in the name.
Reasons include “chest pain,” “immediate threats to life,” and “severe trauma.”
In the last five years, there have also been 670 complaints to local authorities about cosmetic procedures.
Experts have long warned against “non-surgical” cosmetic treatments performed by inexperienced professionals and have repeatedly called for tighter controls on the cosmetics industry.
Alice Webb (pictured), 33, reportedly underwent the procedure at The Studio 23 clinic in Gloucester, run by beautician Jemma Pawlyszyn and Parke, 32, nicknamed the ‘King of Lips’.
Beautician Jordan James Parke has addressed concerns raised following the death of a mother-of-five who died hours after undergoing a non-surgical BBL procedure.
In September, Alice Webb, 34, died just hours after undergoing a non-surgical butt lift, believed to have been performed in the West Country.
Two people were arrested on suspicion of murder and released on bail, including beautician Jordan James Parke, allegedly responsible for the treatment.
At the time, one of Britain’s leading plastic surgeons told this website that Ms Webb is believed to have had a “large volume of filler” injected into her buttocks.
While the risks of the traditional Brazilian butt lift (BBL) are well known (surgery to transfer fat from other areas to the buttocks), non-surgical methods that aim to create the same result are less understood.
Unlike a traditional BBL where fat is transferred from other areas of the body, a liquid BBL involves hyaluronic acid fillers.
Dermal filler, the same material used to fill the lips, is injected in large quantities into the buttocks.
Non-surgical BBLs are not illegal in the UK.
However, last year Wolverhampton City Council banned a company from carrying out liquid BBLs after identifying risks associated with its processes.
These included blood clots, sepsis and the possibility of death of body tissues.
Five local authorities in Essex and Glasgow followed suit and banned certain companies from carrying out liquid BBLs in their area.
In 2023, the Conservative Government held a public consultation on the issue of non-surgical cosmetic procedures and pledged to examine new regulations.
But no further action was taken before the election.
When safety concerns were raised this week with Labor Health Secretary Wes Streeting, he said it was “absolutely disgusting that you have wild west operators carrying out cosmetic surgery in a really dangerous way and putting people’s lives at risk”.
And he added: “We have seen it in the tragic case of Alice.”