Knowing Who’s Injecting Your BOTOX
BOTOX® Cosmetic is the go-to wrinkle treatment for millions of Americans. It’s been the top cosmetic procedure for 6 years running and there’s no close second. There are alternatives, Dysport® and XEOMIN®, but BOTOX commands the vast majority of the market.
The reasons for the popularity of BOTOX are pretty simple. In a culture that values youth, getting a few injections and then returning to work or meeting someone for lunch is easy and effective. It’s not exactly cheap, but the $300 to $500 most people pay for a treatment is worth trimming a few years off their appearance — and it’s a fraction of the cost of cosmetic surgery.
The relative ease of getting BOTOX treatments, however, has led to individuals assuming that just about anyone can perform the injections. In fact, BOTOX parties, although less common now than a few years ago, are still around. Friends gather at someone’s home, drink some wine, and have a guest injector provide BOTOX to the attendees. Sometimes the treatments are discounted.
Reducing a medical procedure to the equivalent of a social gathering, doctors says, devalues the risks inherent with any medical treatment. BOTOX injections are relatively safe when given by an experienced doctor, but complications do occur. Pain and bruising are the most common, but in the rare instance that something goes wrong, patients need a doctor in a medical office to treat them.
Besides the physical risks, patients may unwittingly be getting ripped off by injectors who either dilute the drug or use something that’s not BOTOX at all. Fake BOTOX (and other drugs) is a real threat, prompting the FDA to issue a warning to physicians last fall to beware of “rogue wholesale drug distributors.”
BOTOX and other neurotoxins are injected with precision into tiny muscles that are responsible for causing wrinkles around the eyes and forehead when we make facial expressions. The prescription drug blocks transmission of nerve signals to the muscles.
The Physicians’ Coalition for Injectable Safety (PCIS) states that at a minimum BOTOX should be injected by a registered nurse or physician assistant under the supervision of a qualified doctor who has prescribed the injection for you. Additionally, the organization states the patient should always have the option of requesting a doctor to perform their injection.
But too often, says one plastic surgeon, doctors don’t even see patients who come in for cosmetic injections.
Dr. Houtan Chaboki, a specialist with BOTOX injections and facelift surgery in Washington, D.C., told The New York Times that the growing trend of injections and other non-surgical cosmetic treatments being performed by physician assistants is concerning.
“They might be under physician supervision, but the physician may not even be in the room,” the surgeon told the newspaper in a story published last August. “They may just be reviewing the chart afterward.”
The concern that practitioners without enough training or experience are performing cosmetic injections prompted the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery (ASDS) to recommend that only physicians administer injectable soft tissue fillers (such as JUVÉDERM® and Restylane®) and neurotoxins, including BOTOX.
Exactly who can perform injections is regulated state to state, but all states require a healthcare professional to administer BOTOX. In England, where rules regulating who can administer cosmetic injections are more lax than in the U.S., the Royal College of Surgeons has pushed for allowing only trained doctors, nurses, and dentists to give BOTOX injections.
The bottom line for patients is to ensure that the person performing the injections is a qualified doctor or licensed RN or physician assistant. That’s especially important for anyone getting the treatments at a salon or day spa, which may not have a doctor directly supervising the staff on a daily basis.
{Disclosure: Compensation was provided in exchange for this sponsored post.}
