By Jessica Jaganathan

MESOTHERAPY was one of 11 aesthetic treatments highlighted by the Health Ministry earlier this year as being dubious.

On Thursday, the medical profession decided that doctors can continue to offer it and seven other controversial treatments, but under stricter conditions.

From November, doctors who offer aesthetic treatments, which have low or no scientific evidence, will have to offer them as part of a clinical trial or a study documenting the treatment vigorously.

These treatments, offered by numerous general practitioners and plastic surgeons currently, include fat reducing carboxytherapy and microneedling dermarollers and skin whitening injections.

Doctors will also not be allowed to advertise these treatments and will have to get written permission from patients before doing them, provided they have used all other conventional and evidence-based treatments first.

This is how the medical profession - Academy of Medicine (AMS) and College of Family Physicians (CFPS)- is treating mesotherapy and a group of other less established aesthetic treatments that came under scrutiny in recent months.

The profession also drew up another list of aesthetic procedures, which are more established and are better researched scientifically, and spelt out who could do them and where the procedures could be carried out.

For instance, minimally invasive filer injections can now be done by both plastic surgeons and GPs in a clinic while the invasive breast enhancement procedure can only be done by a plastic surgeons in operating theatres.

Last week, the Health Ministry unveiled rules designed to regulate liposuction, which has led to deaths in other countries, but not here.

Now, the medical profession and Singapore Medical Council has gone on to over 30 other procedures.

Although as guidelines, they are less stringent than having a legislation in place, errant doctors can be referred to the Singapore Medical Council for disciplinary hearing, said the immediate past Master of AMS Prof Ho Lai Yun.