Monday, June 23, 2003

 

Botox (tm), which is manufactured by Allergan, makes the news once again.
A while back, I described the experience that a friend of mine had with Botox, a slight adverse effect which she suffered, which caused her to forego any further treatments. A good friend of hers also is no longer getting treatments as a direct result of her adverse reaction. OK, in this case, the lady in question had a temporary deadening of the left side of her face which gave her a lopsided smile and caused her to slur words slightly, sort of a lisp, not like a drunk slurs words. She had the treatment and then went to her dentist and had fallen asleep asleep at the dentist office, contrary to the advice of her doctor who administered the Botox shots. She awoke a while later to the left side of her face being partially immobilized. She did not realize anything had happened out of the ordinary until she saw herself in the mirror when she went to remove her makeup, and noticed her face looked slightly different. As she made faces, she saw exactly what had happened, and then talking sounded different as well and she had difficuly ennunciating. There it was, the left side of her face down to the corner of her mouth just didn't work like it did before the treatmment. She returned to her doctor and found there was nothing to be done but wait. The effects lessen over time as the toxin loses the localized effect of relaxing the muscles. This reduction of effect over time is why the treatment for the facial wrinkles has to be repeated periodically. It wears off, and it takes another round of shots to make it work again. In my friend's case, the treatment wore off after two months or so and there appears to be no permanent aftereffect. Her face is back to what it was before and moves as faces should and she can once again ennunciate properly. She considers herself to be quite fortunate that there was no permanent effect to her face, but she has stopped the treatments and her friend followed suit based on this one time problem. On Dateline on ABC, they covered Botox again because of a lawsuit by a prominent person in Hollywood against an equally prominent dermatoligist. The program once again, questioned the use of Botox and the frequency of side effects when used for various other things than for creases in the forehead area between the eyebrows. The lady in the lawsuit received Botox as a "off label" treatment for migraine headaches ("off label" means a treatment allowed but not specifically approved yet by the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration) and apparently had an adverse reaction which had her in bed for several months. The doctor says he did nothing wrong, of course, and she says he did do something wrong. This is another case of "he said, she said" in my opinion. I do not see, from what I saw on ABC, how a jury can make a decision in her favor since it is simply her word without any independent evidence to back up her story. No 3rd party evidence does not mean it did not happen exactly the way she says, just that I find it less likely to believe since many other people have had essentially the same treatment without disaster. Maybe this lady is the true "one in a million" commonly quoted by odds makers. How does a jury decide on this case, without direct evidence to point to to show where the fault lies? No matter, my lady friend says she will never do any Botox treatments ever again and her friend is equally adament. My question is this: will people learn a lesson from this lawsuit and maybe not do something which could hold danger? Or will they just think of this as a freak accident and still get the shots?

Posted by: Rowlfe - at: 6/23/2003 11:53:00 AM

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