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Dr Barry Eppley comments on the Medspa industry

Article Summary: The emergence of the medspa concept is recent and relatively unregulated. More often than not, they are developed based on a business model and not ideally for patient safety or treatment effectiveness. The training and experience of many medspa staff performing treatments is often lacking with very limited physician support or expertise. Ideally, medspas should have physician support who have extensive experience to perform the procedures

Medspas have been cropping up on nearly every corner over the past five years. From strip malls to medical office buldings, the pursuit of cash revenues from office-based procedures has been growing.The emergence of Botox, injectable fillers, liposdissolve, and laser treatments, in combination with the public's insatiable appetite for youth and anti-aging treatments, has been largely responsible for this medspa concept. The medical quality behind many medspas, however, may be lacking.

Comments from palstic surgeons about this trend are usually viewed as attempts at 'constraint of fair trade'. Personally, I don't care what others do, inside or outside of medicine. I have enough to worry about in my plastic surgery and spa practice and I prefer to focus on honing my own skills and providing the best possible cosmetic care that I can. Aesthetic treatments fall outside of traditional medical regulations...it is really let the buyer beware. There are few regulatory agencies or guidelines for a burgeoning field that is not behest to federal and private insurance rules of reimbursement. In this market, only the attorneys and the threat of malpractice and liability issues (and perhaps one's good conscience ??) keep it from spinning completely out of control.

What I find most troubling, however, is the complete disregard or lack of concern about patient safety.....for the sake of revenues. Here in Indianapolis, I know of aestheticians who regularly perform Botox in their own home, cosmetologists doing injectable fillers in hair salons, nurse assistants doing lipodissolve injections, Internists performing threadlifts and ENT surgeons doing breast augmentations in their own surgery centers. Providers performing procedures for which they have little training and and no formal background, not to mention being well outside what their licenses and certificates would permit, treating patients as study subjects. (when you are training on someone without supervision by a qualified provider in an educational setting....you are a study subject!) And I wouldn't call visiting someone for a few hours in their office or watching a DVD by a manufacturer bona fide training either! The providers aside, I am not sure exactly what some patients are thinking.....is it the allure of a more convenient or cheaper service.....or is it the appeal of a well-crafted advertisement or website?

Equally disturbing....and the genesis of this rant is......that physician (and yes some dentists too) and other allied health and beauty care providers will contact me in the hope of providing them with some training. The very fact that this is done is highly reflective of some deeper problematic issues........and not just that they obviously don't respect my time and plastic surgery experience. (I got my training the old-fashioned way... what would be my motivation to give that knowledge away for free for their benefit?) Such requests for quick and easy on-site training indicate that they have no appreciation for the subtle nuances and complexities of aesthetic medicine. Just because you can take a needle and inject something doesn't mean you know whether this is the appropriate treatment for the patient's problem and whether an injection or other more sophisticated form of treatment might not be better. The simplicity of a treatment doesn't always equate with overall effectiveness. Fortunately, most of these aesthetic treatments don't carry high risks of medical complications but they do carry significant risks of poor 'value'. Value in aesthetic medicine, while second in importance to safety, is a real economic issue for patients. What do you get...for what you are paying for? For example, the use of injectable fillers, may not be so inexpensive if poor results are obtained...and the patient later learns that they would have been better off with a facelift from the beginning. Several thousands dollars of lipodissolve treatments for a 10% improvement in a body area is very disappointing when twice that amount of money for liposuction would have produced a much better result a lot faster.

The point is.....aesthetic treatments, like traditional medical therapies, require a diagnosis, treatment planning, and a review of treatment options. That is not something you can learn in a few hours of observation, reading a manual, or watching a DVD.

Article Source: http://www.upublish.info

About the Author:
Dr Barry Eppley
Dr Barry Eppley runs a private plastic surgery practice through his hospital-based medspa locations at Clarian Health in Indianapolis. To learn more about the latest trends in plastic surgery, spa therapies, or skin care, go to his daily blog, http://www.exploreplasticsurgery.com .