Storefront medical spas, specializing in cosmetic procedures like botox and laser skin treatments, have grown from "a dozen or so" in the U.S. five years ago to over 1,250 today, according to today's Wall Street Journal. Many of these are located in swank shopping centers or malls, and often they have no doctor on premises to oversee procedures.
Excerpts from the Journal's summary follow:
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Stand-alone stores, and chains with names such as Radiance Medspa, Solana MedSpas and Sona MedSpa, have opened in a number of states in the past few years -- often in swank shopping districts. And their numbers are growing fast. There are 1,250 to 1,500 so-called medical spas in the U.S., up from a dozen or fewer five years ago, estimates Hannelore Leavy, executive director of the International Medical Spa Association, a trade group.
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The spas say that they contract with physicians to oversee the services, and procedures are usually administered by a nurse or licensed technician. Some spa owners say that nurses and technicians are often more experienced and skilled at nonsurgical procedures than physicians. And they say that a physician is reachable on short notice if complications arise. Andrew Rudnick, chief executive officer of Sleek MedSpas Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla., says the chain has a medical director who floats among the four Boston stores and performs some treatments herself.
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Though physicians may be in charge of medical services at some spas, they may not actually be on hand when treatment is being given, which some doctors in clinical practice say is cause for concern. Restylane facial-contouring injections and intense-pulsed-light treatments "are not innocuous," says Neil Sadick, a New York dermatologist who practices in Manhattan. He notes that complications may arise that require a physician's intervention, such as allergic reactions to medication.
... Jordan Miles, a 51-year-old mental-health counselor in Wewahitchka, Fla. [was the victim of burns]. She decided to get a $250 laser treatment for sun spots on her back after she went to a store in Panama City, Fla., to ask about options for her teen-age son's acne. The treatment was painful and she was severely burned, resulting in a disfiguring pattern of "zebra stripes" on her back, she says. She learned later that neither of the laser technicians who treated her was a nurse as she had believed. She says she has filed a regulatory complaint against the store's owner and is considering filing a lawsuit.
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