미용성형의료행위의 개념 정립에 관한 연구

Abstract

Cosmetic surgery, as a category of medical practice, may be considered the same as general medical practice in terms of associated risks such as invasiveness and irreversibility. However, cosmetic surgery has no medical adaptability or therapeutic purposes as its major objective is to increase subjective and aesthetic satisfaction. Its lack of urgency and emergency, as well as its strong characteristic of profitability and subjective evaluation, has also raised the necessity of separating cosmetic surgery from medical practice, which is characterized by its therapeutic purposes. In Korea, a number of precedents have been set to protect the rights of surgery recipients by imposing a heightened duty of care on cosmetic surgeons, and by recognizing the status of subcontractors due to the inherent characteristics of cosmetic surgery/procedures. The academic world has also held that cosmetic surgery, which has no therapeutic purposes, should be treated differently from traditional medical practice. Meanwhile, Austria and France have established legal principles similar to those of Korea based on the fact that cosmetic surgery has no therapeutic purposes and is actually a commercial service. In addition, some countries, including the abovementioned, have imposed further legislative measures, such as revising laws to ensure safer cosmetic surgery based on careful deliberation. In this study, therefore, we examine the history of cosmetic surgery practice, its relation with medical practice, and the specificity of cosmetic surgery practice in order to extract indicators useful for developing conceptual elements of cosmetic surgery practice in Korea, thereby establishing the concept of cosmetic surgery practice. Given that precedents in Korea have required increased duty of care of surgeons who perform cosmetic surgery compared to those who perform medical practice for therapeutic purposes, establishment of conceptual elements for cosmetic surgery practice can help to distinguish the practice from medical practice for therapeutic purposes, resolve medical disputes reasonably, and assist surgeons and surgery recipients to make a more careful decision on the surgery, thereby preventing unnecessary medical disputes.