Oprah boosts treatments, but . . .
Here we go again with another case example of the dangers of our "Pop Culture Icons" legitimizing treatments to their audiences that are not as they appear. Look... Oprah is loved by so many viewers and I think the world of her but it is just innapropriate for her to send this message to her audience... What makes for entertaining television does not always equate to "good medicine".
Oprah boosts treatments, but . . .
HERALD STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
Few Americans had heard of a beauty treatment called Thermage until Oprah Winfrey began championing it on her talk show. Billed as a procedure to tighten skin, Thermage uses a radio-wave emitting machine to heat and expand collagen beneath the skin's surface.
In episodes with names like "How to Stop the Clock on Aging," "Look Younger! Live Longer!" and "Look 10 Years Younger in 10 Days," Winfrey introduced Thermage as one of the "latest cutting-edge treatments" and as a "lunchtime face-lift" that requires no recovery time.
About Face, a medical aesthetic clinic on Manatee Avenue in Bradenton, has a Thermage machine as well as a DVD of an "Oprah" episode touting the procedure. Patients can watch the video and peruse similar educational materials when deciding whether to go ahead with the treatment, said Diane D'Anca, a paramedical medical aesthetician there.
"Absolutely. Yes, I do" think Winfrey can influence her viewers to try new things, D'Anca said. "She can choose to do anything, obviously . . . and she looks awesome."
Thermage pricing at About Face starts at $2,600 and depends on the number of pulses stimulating the collagen in the skin. D'Anca suggests her patients receive enough stimulation to get the results they want.
The machine had a packed schedule late last week. D'Anca has had the machine for a year and a half and said only 25 percent of patients need the procedure done more than once.
Popular with women and men, the procedure takes about two-and-a-half hours. It stimulates new collagen growth with no surgery, injections or downtime, D'Anca said. "It's pretty much reshaping the future of skin care."
When Thermage was first showcased on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2003, "the show drove so much interest that our sales reps were selling machines over the phone," said Stephen J. Fanning, president and chief executive of Thermage Inc., which sells machines to doctors for about $30,000.
And every time "Oprah" reruns one of its Thermage episodes, most recently last summer, traffic on the Thermage Web site (thermage.com) spikes to 30,000 hits for the day, Fanning said. Ten to 14 percent of the people who visit the site after seeing an "Oprah" episode end up visiting a doctor's office to have a facial procedure, at an average cost of $3,500, he added.
Winfrey's ability to create best-selling books with an endorsement on Oprah's Book Club is well known. Much less recognized is her Midas touch in the beauty industry. With an average of about 9 million viewers daily, the "Oprah" show drives enormous traffic to cosmetics counters, spas and doctors' offices when she endorses a product or a treatment, according to beauty industry executives.
"Getting on 'Oprah' is like winning the lottery," said Marianne Diorio, senior vice president of global communications for Estee Lauder. "Because her audience really trusts her, if Oprah or her producers sincerely fall in love with some product or person, the results can be spectacular," Diorio said.
The skin-care brand Philosophy was sold only in a handful of stores when Winfrey included its Hope in a Jar moisturizer in a 1996 episode. "She took this obscure little company and gave us national name recognition," said Cristina Carlino, founder of Philosophy. The brand now sells in Nordstrom, Macy's and Sephora stores and on QVC. Last December, when Philosophy Amazing Grace Shower Gel appeared on "Oprah," the product's monthly sales increased to 18,000 bottles from 3,000 the previous December, said Carlino, who calls her manufacturing plant "the house that Oprah built."
But a number of doctors say such an impact is more problematic when the beauty treatment being featured is medical, with possible complications, rather than simply a cosmetic or spa procedure. In its desire to be the first show to introduce the latest anti-wrinkle options, "Oprah" sometimes features treatments before doctors have determined how effective they are, who they are best suited for and how safe they are, according to some leading dermatologists and plastic surgeons.
"Cosmetic procedures are presented in a casual, cavalier fashion that gives people a false sense of security about safety," said Dr. Amy E. Newburger, a dermatologist in Scarsdale, N.Y., who is a consultant on the Food and Drug Administration's General and Plastic Surgery Devices Panel, a committee that issues recommendations on whether new devices should be approved.
Emphasizing that she offered her own opinion, not that of the agency, Newburger added: "Do you remember how angry Oprah was when she found out that fellow lied to her about his memoir?" She was referring to James Frey, the author of "A Million Little Pieces." "When is she going to get irate because these cosmetic treatments are not the risk-free procedures she was told they were?"
Lisa Halliday, communications director of Winfrey's production company, said in a statement: "Harpo Productions Inc., as the producer of 'The Oprah Winfrey Show,' presents to its viewers content that reflects research-supported emerging products and procedures."
A critic, Dr. Roy G. Geronemus, a clinical professor of dermatology at New York University Medical Center, said that medical procedures were presented on the show as "a gross oversimplification."
"People see a physician on 'Oprah' touting a new procedure," he added, "and they think that if it's coming from Oprah, it must be gospel."
He said segments that presented more than one doctor's view of a new technology would better serve viewers. Most important, the show should explain that some cosmetic procedures are so specialized that they are best performed by doctors with extensive formal training in facial anatomy and not by general practitioners or nurses.
In 2004 "The Oprah Winfrey Show" gave the first major television exposure to the facial thread lift, in which threads made of surgical suture material are embedded in the face and used to hoist lax tissue. Winfrey called it "a cutting-edge procedure with no cutting edges" on the show.
Dr. Karyn Grossman, a dermatologist in Santa Monica, Calif., and New York City, said she had just learned the thread-lift technique when she demonstrated it on "Oprah." Winfrey's producers "are interested in getting something out the door first before it has been shown elsewhere," said Grossman, who has had positive results performing the lift on her own patients.
Since that show was broadcast, doctors have reported complications from thread lifts including scarring, indentations, bunching, dimpling, broken or lapsed threads, and asymmetry, said Dr. V. Leroy Young, a plastic surgeon in St. Louis who is the outgoing chairman of the emerging trends task force of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Thirty of 51 plastic surgeons Young polled at the society's annual meeting in April said they thought thread lifts created more problems than benefits, he said. The "Oprah" show reran the original thread lift episode last August.
"Oprah is well-intentioned, and she doesn't give bad advice," Young said. "But if she told viewers that arsenic would make them beautiful, we'd be getting hundreds of calls from people asking us for arsenic."
In the case of Thermage, the skin-tightening procedure, the dermatologist Dr. Patricia Wexler first presented it on the "Oprah" show in 2003. Wexler, who is based in New York City, told viewers that after a patient had a Thermage treatment, "the jaw line gets tighter and tighter, just like a neck-lift." But earlier this month she said it is impossible for doctors to predict how well the treatment will work on an individual patient.
"I tell patients it's never a strikeout or a home run, but everyone will get on base, we just don't know which base ahead of time," she said.
Since the FDA approved the treatment for use on eye wrinkles and folds in 2002, Americans have had about 125,000 Thermage procedures and about 1,000 of the machines have been sold, according to Thermage Inc. of Hayward, Calif.
The agency has collected 172 reports from doctors and patients of problems caused by Thermage, including facial burns and indentations.
Fanning, the chief executive of Thermage Inc., said in a statement that no medical procedure is risk-free and "99.8 percent of the treatments have had no adverse reports."
But Dr. Gary Motykie, a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles who has become a specialist in treating burns caused by Thermage treatments, said the "Oprah" show should make viewers aware of problems associated with new beauty devices. One of his patients who had the treatment after seeing it on "Oprah" came to him with indented craters and ripples in her face and neck where the procedure melted the underlying fat, he said.
"The patient wanted to know how this technology could get on TV," said Motykie, whose practice does not offer Thermage.
Wexler suggested a possible answer. "I always say these shows are too dreamy," she said. "They never talk about the bad because the bad doesn't sell."
Natasha Singer of the New York Times News Service wrote this report, with local inserts by Herald reporter Tiffany St. Martin.
Local Thermage availability
posted by Dr. Andrew Mark Klapper at 11:35 AM
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