Botox and fillers: the questions worth asking first

Injectables are the most commonly offered treatment in Dubai and the least standardised. The products are regulated, the training is not uniform, and the results depend almost entirely on the judgement of the person holding the syringe. That is an uncomfortable thing to discover afterwards.

You can find out most of what you need to know before anything is injected, with five questions that are entirely reasonable to ask.

Ask who is actually holding the needle

In the UAE, injectables are a medical treatment and the person performing them must be licensed to do so. That licence is individual: it belongs to the practitioner, not to the clinic. A clinic can be perfectly licensed while an individual working in it is not licensed for the specific procedure you are booking.

Ask for the name and the role of the person who will treat you, and check that the clinic is comfortable giving both. Licences are published on the register of the authority that issued them, so a name is all you need to confirm one.

Ask which product, and how many units

Both numbers should be written down before you agree, and both should appear on what you sign. Brand matters because products are not interchangeable in how they behave or how long they last. Units matter because it is the only way to compare one consultation with another, and the only way to tell your next practitioner what you have had.

• The product name, written, not just a category like “filler”
• The number of units or the volume being placed
• Where each one is going, agreed before you lie down

A practitioner who records this as a matter of routine is keeping a medical record. One who does not is selling a treatment.

Ask for a protocol for your skin, not a setting

This applies to lasers and energy devices more than to injectables, and it is the question that prevents the most harm. Skin responds differently to light depending on how much pigment it contains, and the Fitzpatrick scale is the shorthand clinicians use for that. Settings appropriate for one type can burn or cause lasting pigment change in another.

So the question is not what machine they have. It is what their protocol is for your skin type, and how many patients with your skin they have treated with it. In a city as mixed as Dubai, any clinic doing this seriously will have an immediate answer.

Ask for a test patch

Before a full course of any energy-based treatment, a small test area shows how your skin actually reacts rather than how it is predicted to. It costs a visit and it removes the largest unknown.

A clinic that declines to test before committing you to a course of sessions is telling you something about how it manages risk.

Ask what happens if it takes more sessions

Courses are sold as a number of sessions. Skin does not read the brochure. Some people need more, which is normal, and the only thing that should be settled in advance is what the additional sessions cost and whether the original plan is revisited or simply extended.

Ask the same about results that do not last as expected. Not as a complaint in advance, but because a clinic with a written answer has thought about it before, and a clinic without one has not.

What to do with the answers

Five questions, and you will know more about a clinic than any gallery of photographs can tell you. A practitioner named and licensed for the procedure. The product and the units in writing. A protocol for your skin rather than a default. A test before a course. A written position on what happens if more is needed.

If that sounds like a lot to manage during a consultation where you are already slightly nervous, it is. We ask these before anyone is introduced to you, and bring back a clinic whose answers are on file.