Home Fashion & Style Charlotte Cripps left with permanent burn marks after an IPL session

Charlotte Cripps left with permanent burn marks after an IPL session

Arts writer Charlotte Cripps from Ladbroke Grove, London, UK, was off to a private beauty therapist for a lovely session of pampering when a botched procedure left her forever “permanently scared”.

Charlotte Cripps, 40, underwent Intense Pulsed Light treatment – where light is used to smooth the complexion – for a newspaper story in 2008.

With the treatment recommended by a friend, Charlotte Cripps was shocked when she felt “excruciating pain” as the technician ran a hand-held machine over her chest and face at a London spa.

“I left the department store and got home within about 20 minutes. I looked in the mirror and I screamed,” Charlotte Cripps said.

“My chest was covered in red burn marks that look a little like when you brand an animal.

“I couldn’t put a duvet over me or anything because it was just so raw and painful,” Charlotte Cripps told the BBC’s Inside Out London programme, which was broadcast last night at 7:30 p.m.

Charlotte Cripps was shocked when she felt “excruciating pain” as the technician ran a hand-held machine over her chest and face at a London spa

Charlotte Cripps was shocked when she felt “excruciating pain” as the technician ran a hand-held machine over her chest and face at a London spa

Charlotte Cripps, who is a writer for The Independent, spent months in pain after the treatment in 2008 and has now been given a five-figure sum in compensation by the spa’s insurers.

The woman said: “I think there should be laws brought in so you can’t have IPL or Botox unless it is administered under the supervision of a doctor.”

1.5 million cosmetic surgery procedures will be carried out in the UK this year, many in lunch breaks or at parties.

Heidi Worman, a paramedical cosmetic make-up practitioner, said recent moves by the Government to deregulate IPL and the laser industry were a step in the wrong direction.

“We need these regulations just to protect the public,” she said, adding she was finding a greater need for treatments to correct cosmetic surgery.