6 minute read
AESTHETICS: AN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE
An American Perspective
At this year’s NSS, Nadine Dilong sat down with DR LINA VARGAS from Florida to chat all things patient safety, trends, and challenges.
Tell me a little bit about your clinic, Lumina, in Florida and what treatments you offer.
I’m a vascular surgeon by training, and I used to do the full spectrum of vascular surgery up until 2018 when I gave up arterial treatments. In pretty much the first year of my practice, which opened in 2018, we incorporated aesthetic treatments. So I mainly had patients who I was doing scleral therapy for cosmetic vein treatments, and they were wanting treatment for vascular lesions in other places of the body, under eye veins, the little cherry angiomas, little different vascular lesions here and there. So I found myself go out there and find a really nice platform to be able to do that, while also addressing issues like pigmentation, skin quality, skin texture, scarring. My first device was a Sciton laser, and it’s still one of my favourite devices for that indication.
And then slowly but surely, I started expanding into essentially everything else. My vision for my clinic was to be able to offer my clients, my patients, a comprehensive selection of all the treatments that they may be wanting, not only from the aesthetic standpoint, but wellness and body as well. So essentially, we offer pretty much everything at this point, which is just nice, because when we get a new client, the relationships that we want to build with them are lifelong and we don’t want to just do one thing and then have them have to go somewhere else to get those other treatments they’re after.
Do you feel people are open to comprehensive, holistic treatment plans?
They definitely appreciate it. I spend a lot of time during my initial consultation explaining ageing. Most of my patients are going through ageing, whether early in their 30s or 40s, starting to notice those initial wrinkles or maybe later, where they’re really noticing a lot of changes. And so when we address their specific concern, they’re going to be happy, but then most likely are going to start noticing other things. And so we want to show them what we’re capable of doing, so that they get that optimal result. Most people are actually on board with a comprehensive treatment that doesn’t stop where their specific concern goes.
What are laser regulations like in Florida? How do you ensure patient safety?
In the United States, it differs from state to state. But in general, laser and light devices can only be operated by a physician or a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant. Patient safety starts at the consultation. It’s all about education and about being very real with the patients, explaining the things that can possibly happen, even if they’re very rare, because if you explain that certain things are a part of the process, and not necessarily a side effect or a complication, then when patients are going through them, they perceive it as the treatment working. And this informed consent totally changes the dynamic. If a patient has to reach back out to you after the treatment saying things like ‘I wasn’t expecting this’, you have to calm them down, but if you had talked about that from the very beginning, then they’re not even concerned. They’re not going to call you. They know that it’s part of the process.
Also, just having very clear protocols and communication with everyone internally in my practice, who is performing the procedures that they are trained and capable of doing. There are procedures that are thankfully very, very safe that essentially anyone can perform. But there are some other, specifically light and laser devices and injectables that require more experience. Safety always has to go first. And I always tell my patients I would much rather not get a result than hurt you or put you in a place where we didn’t want to be. It’s better to go very conservative that very first time, just see how the skin behaves, and then at that point you have a reference. You got the results you wanted. Just stick with those settings, those worked, and they were safe. If you didn’t necessarily get the results you wanted, that’s fine. Now you can maybe adjust a little bit, be a little bit more aggressive, but at the end of the day, it’s all about patient safety and not having complications or side effects as much as we can avoid them.
What would you say is a challenge for aesthetic practitioners at the moment?
I’m an international speaker, and I go to South America quite a bit. And actually there, the main issue is counterfeit devices and treatments. And now in the US, unfortunately it’s things like fake Botox coming from Asian countries, which is really, really scary. Because even though people should not play and not take risks when it comes to medical aesthetic treatments, people do go and find the cheapest thing. A lot of times, when they get these treatments that are not regulated, have not been studied, have not been proven for efficacy or safety, they can actually get hurt. And I thought we were sort of protected in the United States, but unfortunately, we do see that too.
Not long ago a place in Orlando was giving out free ‘Emsculpt’ sessions (when it clearly wasn’t a genuine Emsculpt machine) when they signed up for Semaglutide. Semaglutide is relatively cheap when you compare it with the body sculpting procedure. I mean, that should totally raise all red flags if they’re giving you the expensive treatment for free when you get the injection, the concept itself is interesting.
Unfortunately, people are always going to try to look for the cheaper alternative, and they’re going to find it cheap. I’m not going to lower my prices to compete so doing a lot of education into why this is an investment is probably one of the most important things, which is their health and their wellbeing. And this is not something that you should take risks with.
Have you been to the Non-Surgical Symposium before? What are you excited about?
This is my first time. I couldn’t wait to get here. I absolutely love it. Just being with the rest of the international and the national speakers and connecting with so many people, and learning, and I just love Australia. My only brother actually lives in Sydney, and we love the culture. I’m just very excited about all of the treatments being less and less invasive with less downtime, easier for the patients, easier for the providers, and just the way that we can combine them all to achieve that holistic result and approach. And I kind of like the fact that we’re moving away from fillers and just seeing that trend of more natural results.
