“Being a cosmetic surgeon means I look at everyone through a cosmetic surgeon’s eyes,” he told the Herald in 2014. “If I go to the beach, I don’t see women in bikinis – I see a collection of problems.”
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At the time, AHPRA accused the veteran cosmetic surgeon of breaking “some fundamental tenets of good medical practice”, but took no further action.
Harlow’s case against Granot also coincided with a complaint to AHPRA, which imposed conditions on his registration in July, including a requirement he is supervised while performing any “surgical procedure relating to the internal and external female genitalia and vagina”.
Granot did not respond to requests for comment from this masthead. Harlow’s solicitor, Kathryn Footner, from Footner Wren Legal, declined to comment.
However, Harlow said she was left deeply traumatised from the procedure, which she required after significant damage sustained during childbirth. She concedes she was also motivated by cosmetic reasons.
“I can talk about it now without crying ... but it’s been hugely damaging to me from a psychological and physical perspective. It’s such an intimate part of your body, and you feel like you have been mutilated,” she said.
“It’s just so painful. I’d have a baby every day rather than go through that again. I think I ended up with around 200 stitches. I was chopped to bits.”
Aged in her early 50s, Harlow faces further surgery. She warned other women against such procedures.
“More and more women are getting it done, and more men are thinking women should look like porn stars. We don’t and vaginas come in all shapes in sizes. My advice would be if your partner makes fun of your body, then change your f---ing partner,” Harlow said.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists warns there is little evidence that cosmetic vaginal procedures are effective, enhance sexual function or improve self-image.
“The risks of potential complications such as scarring, adhesions, permanent disfigurement, infection, dyspareunia and altered sexual sensations should be discussed in detail with women seeking such treatments,” the college said.
Professor Mark Ashton says practitioners of “dubious qualifications” are targeting vulnerable young women.Credit: ABC
Mark Ashton, a professor of surgery at the University of Melbourne, said practitioners of “dubious qualifications” were redefining normal anatomy to target vulnerable young women.
Too often, the clinicians performing labiaplasty (the surgical reduction of the inner lips of the vulva) were inadequately trained and used techniques that led to unreliable and unpredictable outcomes, he said.
“Over-resection of tissue is the most common complication I see when patients present for complications after labiaplasty surgery,” said Ashton, the former president of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Ashton said it was incredibly difficult correcting patients who had undergone the resection of labial tissue or botched labiaplasty.
Associate Professor Magdalena Simonis says evidence suggests labiaplasty is one of the fastest growing cosmetic procedures among young people.Credit: Chris Hopkins
“People come from all over Australia to see us after over-section of their labial tissue and are frustrated to find that corrective surgery is often multistaged, very time-consuming and involves significant downtime,” he said.
Associate Professor Magdalena Simonis, the author of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ guidelines on female genital cosmetic surgery, said while the number of labiaplasties was not officially recorded in Australia, mounting evidence suggested it was one of the fastest growing cosmetic procedures among young people.
Medicare claims for labiaplasty and vulvoplasty more than doubled from 707 in 2002-03 to 1584 in 2013-14.
Most people pay to have a labiaplasty in the private sector where, unlike in the United States, Australia does not require reporting of these statistics.
A crackdown about a decade ago means Medicare can be claimed only if the procedure is to repair female genital mutilation or correct an abnormality.
In 2016, the Medical Board of Australia advised that girls under 18 receive mandatory counselling and a three-month cooling-off period if they sought cosmetic vaginal procedures.
Simonis wants tighter regulations around the procedure and said Australia should match the UK Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ position that surgery be avoided where patients are under 18.
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She said the procedure’s popularity had been driven by the trends of removing pubic hair, pornography and online imagery, which had fuelled young people’s anxiety and shame.
Simonis said there was also widespread lack of education about what a normal vulva looked like. Increasing numbers of young people felt convinced their genitals were deformed because they did not match the “Barbie doll” ideal.
“You’ve got a whole generation of adolescents, young women, young adults entering this world, who think that they should look a particular way,” she said.
An AHPRA spokesman said confidentiality provisions in the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law prevented the regulator from commenting about individual matters unless that information was publicly available.
“A search of the national register of practitioners shows Dr Granot is still registered with conditions on his registration,” the spokesman said.
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