1 week's jail for woman, 34, who performed unlicensed home-based lip reduction surgery
iStockNguyen Thi Phuong Huyen, 34, was sentenced to one week's jail on June 6, 2023.
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- Nguyen Thi Phuong Huyen, 34, pleaded guilty to a single charge of providing aesthetics services as an unlicensed medical practitioner
- Her services included a lip procedure that costs S$700 and involved the cutting and removal of skin from the lips to make them smaller
- Nguyen also prescribed medicine which is not available over-the-counter in Singapore
- Nguyen was sentenced to one week's jail
BY
JASMINE ONG
Published June 6, 2023SINGAPORE — A 34-year-old woman who performed surgery on a client wanting smaller lips even though she was not medically qualified to do so has been sentenced to one week's jail.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Huyen, a Vietnamese national who offered aesthetics services out of her flat, pleaded guilty on Tuesday (June 6) to carrying out a medical procedure while not authorised to do so.
Nguyen also gave the client three medications that are not available over the counter in Singapore.
The client's name and location of Nguyen's flat were redacted from court documents by the Ministry of Health (MOH).
MOH prosecutor Andre Tan told the court that following information provided by an informant from the Health Sciences Authority, the ministry had conducted investigations into Nguyen's beauty services.
Court documents did not elaborate on how the informant learnt about Nguyen's beauty services.
MOH investigations revealed that on Sept 22 last year, a client who wanted to reduce the size of her lips had met with Nguyen at her home.
After a visual examination of the client's lips, Nguyen told her that she could remove some skin from the lips to make them look smaller.
The woman agreed and Nguyen had her lie down on a bed in one of the flat's bedrooms, to clean her lips with gauze and a saline lotion before drawing markings on them.
Nguyen then proceeded to inject Lidocaine — a form of anaesthetic — to numb the woman's lips, and made two incisions around her upper lip area to cut and remove some skin.
The cuts were sewed up using a needle and dissolvable stitches.
Nguyen cleaned her client's lips with gauze and saline solution again at the end of the procedure and prescribed medicine which are not available over-the-counter in Singapore.
The client paid Nguyen a total of S$700 for the lip surgery and the medicine supplied.
Mr Tan had also cited the opinion of Dr Gavin Kang from the Academy of Medicine Singapore who stated that such procedures "should only be done" by a registered medical practitioner in Singapore as there were "risks involved".
These ranged from an infection of wounds to scarring of wounds and skin irregularity.
Court documents said that although the procedure carried risks, the client in this case did not suffer adverse effects of Nguyen's treatment.
In delivering his sentence, District Judge Soh Tze Bian noted Nguyen's "extreme remorse" but agreed with the prosecution that a fine would "not be appropriate" given the risk of the procedure.
For performing the lip procedure as an unlicensed medical practitioner, Nguyen could have been jailed for up to 12 months, fined up to S$100,000 or both.
