TEN out of 10 doctors offering at least one type of aesthetic treatment said it will be business as usual for them - at least until practice guidelines are drawn up in a few months.

They told The Straits Times that they have been offering these treatments, and been upfront with patients on the risks and benefits.

General practitioner (GP) Ng Wei Bunn, for instance, will continue offering microneedling, a procedure which claims to smooth out scars and wrinkles by making microscopic punctures on the skin.

He is still getting enquiries on the procedure, he said.

The idea of offering these unproven treatments in the context of clinical trials, as suggested by the Ministry of Health, is not popular among doctors, with eight in 10 of them saying it is time-consuming and impractical.

A clinical trial requires the doctor to submit a treatment plan, report regularly to a scientific or ethics committee on the progress of the treatment and compensate patients if the treatment goes awry.

The doctors were reacting to the ministry's announcement this past week that they should not offer clinically unproven treatments which claim to fight ageing, flab, skin flaws or addictions like smoking.

The ministry added that if these doctors wanted to offer them, these treatments should be run like clinical trials - as is standard practice for doctors seeking to get experimental treatment methods accepted into mainstream medicine.

Read the full story in Wednesday's edition of The Straits Times.