Zerona Laser Comparison And Critique For Laser Centers

This will be a look at and cosmetic laser review of Zerona lasers, a cosmetic laser procedure which is getting a lot more common in laser centers, skin clinics and  plastic surgeon clinics. This unique assessment pertains to a particular study named Low Level Laser Therapy Effectiveness For Reducing Pain After Breast  Augmentation, American Journal Of Cosmetic Surgery Volume 26, November 3rd, 2009. The entire guide was initial published on Medical Spa MD.

1. The first thing they coach you on throughout medical school on how to appraise research is what individuals procured the actual study. In this case the actual patron for this research and article was Erchonia the company who makes Zerona lasers.

2. So , who authored the article? In this case the article seems to happen to have been crafted by Ryan Maloney. Who’s Ryan Maloney? He is not just the medical director of Erchonia he honestly is one of the owners of the patent in the Zerona laser. Aside from that you don’t recognise his background. We know he’s not even a PhD or MD. Otherwise it could be behind his name beneath the authorship of the article. He  possesses a direct fiscal benefit to create the content in a advantageous light.

3. 8 individuals didn’t have finalized measurements. The very first thought is precisely why? Four had been in the treated group and 4 were from the  placebo group. At first that seems to be OK, but after you examine further into it, they kept all of these test subjects contained in the study.  They took the final measurements for all those patients and brought them forward. Once again, it seems Ok to start with but should you  start to look at the trend of circumferential loss in the two weeks post procedure the dimensions are trending back towards  base line. So if you ever include all these individual’s last measurement (which by the way is the greatest overall average circumferential reduction  through the treatments for the treated group) and bring these forward they are going to artificially decrease the real values fourteen days post  procedure. All 8 of these individuals should have already been eliminated from the report.

4. There’s no analysis of cosmetic gain. To have this be worth something you would need to have before and after pictures that  are reviewed by a group of people that are blinded to what procedure the particular participant received. So, to put it differently,  is a three inch reduction aesthetically appreciable.

5. They just do not state if participants are male or female. Therefore the question is left, does it work as well on males as it does on females? This may be critical because males tend to have thicker skin. As a result, does the laser penetrate as deep in men?

6. the study was limited to patients with a BMI of 25 to 30. Now I think it is fine to have this limitation as you’ve to  start your research somewhere. But the limitation is that the article is implying that it will work for all BMI’s. What about the  thinner female patient with a BMI of 20 but has a small lower abdominal pooch? Or what about the patient that has a BMI of 35?  This should be stated in the conclusion but Mr. Maloney seems to forget this.

7. They also do not state if the patients received their procedures for free or if they were compensated for their time. This  is only important for the portion of the study that talked about the patient satisfaction. We need to understand that patients  will put a value on the treatment because if something is free their expectations are much lower. their expectations are much  higher if they paid $2500 for the procedure. So if this was free to the patient and you might have 30% of the treated group that are  dissatisfied or neutral what would that mean to a clinic if the patients are paying for it. I would guess you will have a much  higher dissatisfied group that either wants their money back or free procedures. I do not want something in my clinic that has a  30% failure rate.

8. They do not discuss if either group was asked to change their diets. This should be stated up front in the methods portion  of the article. They also do not mention if there were any dietary supplements required like niacin. Nearly all clinics using Zerona  are having the patients take niacin even Erchonia recommends it.

9. They set the standard for success to be an inch loss of 3 inches or greater. Only 62.86% of the treated group achieved  success. So this translates in to a 37.14% failure rate. Again, not something that I would want to stake my reputation on.

10. Now what do the numbers mean? If you ever look at the numbers the patients baseline combined measurement average was 120.31  inches. At week 2 of procedure (the best measurements achieved) the average was 116.79 inches or an inch loss of 3.52 inches on  average. This sounds pretty good until you look at the true numbers. Using the numbers from the study this equates to a 2.9% inch  loss as measured over 4 areas. Is this clinically (visually) significant? I do not think that many individuals will be able to see  a 2.9% change or if they can it will be meaningful.

11. Lets take a look at the 2 weeks post procedure measurements. Remember, these are not true numbers as 4 patients had their  best numbers included in these measurements pulled forward and included here. (I think all of their measurements should have been  puled out). At 2 weeks post procedure, you view a .31 inch increase from the circumferential measurements at the 2 week  procedures. What this equates to is an 8.8% increase in inches in only 2 weeks. So what goes on at 4 weeks? 6 Weeks? So if it were  a perfectly linear increase it would only take about 20 weeks or so to be 100% back at baseline. That is if it were linear and I  highly doubt it is usually a linear response and if i had to guess most patients will be back at baseline measurements within 6 to 10  weeks and this is why there are no long term medical studies. The organization has had ample time to produce longer term medical studies they  apparently do not want to.

So as you can see, there are a few issues with this article and how it was analyzed and written. The first and foremost problem is  that the article was authored by an individual with direct financial interest in the product. The ASLMS journal never should have  published this article as a result of the authors conflict of interest or it should have a disclaimer prior to the abstract. I have no  vested interest in any of these non-invasive technologies and would love to view something like this work and have long term  benefits for the patients. I think this technology may have better long term benefits on cholesterol etc. I have heard that there  are some interesting scientific studies coming. I just hope they are not written by Mr. Maloney. And for others reading this I assume that  Chad works for Erchonia or the marketing business that is selling this thing to anyone they can including chiropractors.