Medical disclaimer

Information, not advice

Everything on SalonCompass is general information. It is written for people who are about to sit in a salon chair and want to know what the published guidance says before they do. It is not a diagnosis, not a treatment plan, and not personal medical advice for you specifically.

We can tell you what a national health service or a specialist body says about a treatment and a condition in general. We cannot know your history, your medication, how your condition is behaving this month, or what your own clinicians have already told you — and every one of those can change the answer completely.

No doctor–patient relationship

Reading this site does not create a doctor–patient or practitioner–client relationship with anyone. Nobody here has assessed you. Nothing here is a prescription, a referral, or clearance to go ahead with a treatment.

Use these pages to work out which questions are worth asking, then put those questions to your GP, your specialist, your midwife, your pharmacist, or the practitioner who would be treating you. If a treatment provider tells you something that contradicts a page here, that is a conversation to have with them and with your own doctor — not a reason to rely on us over the person who can actually examine you.

If something is urgent

This site is not for emergencies and is not monitored. Nobody reads these pages in real time and nothing here can help you quickly.

If you are seriously unwell, struggling to breathe, bleeding heavily, or you think you are having a severe allergic reaction, call 999 or go to your nearest emergency department. If you are worried and it is not an emergency, NHS 111 is available around the clock. If something after a treatment is getting worse rather than better, contact a health professional instead of waiting to see whether it settles.

Where our answers come from, and where they stop

Our verdicts are drawn from published guidance and cited on the page. Where our sources do not give a clear answer, the page says so and shows nothing rather than guessing. Pages about treatment for cancer are held back from showing safety ratings until a medical reviewer has signed them off.

Guidance changes. A page shows the date its content last changed, and we do our best to keep up, but there will always be a gap between a guideline being revised and this site catching up with it. Treat an old date as a reason to check, not as a guarantee.

Our focus is UK guidance, and some of what we describe — including which treatments are legal, and at what age — is specific to the UK, and in places to England alone. If you are being treated elsewhere, the rules where you are may differ.

Your decision, and the practitioner's

Deciding to have a treatment is yours to make with the people who know your health. A practitioner also has their own duty to assess you and, where it is not appropriate, to decline — and a good one will. Nothing on this site overrides either judgement, and nothing here should be shown to a practitioner as authority to go ahead.

To the extent the law allows, we accept no liability for what is done or not done on the basis of these pages.