I currently work as a nurse/administrator for an oculoplastic surgeon within a very busy, very large ophthalmology practice. We recently opened our own "aesthetic" suite and are looking to add some additional services to our surgical and injectable interventions.

We will pretty much limit treatments to face and neck. We want to offer LHR (if for no other reason than to get folks' attention), pigmentation treatment, skin tightening, skin rejuvenation, etc. We do not want to replace the CO2 laser skin resurfacing that we offer in our surgery center, but would like to have another option for those patients who can't afford the extended down time.

Our patient population is mostly skin types I-III, over age 40. Most of our business now is medical, but we want to attract more cosmetic clients and hopefully convert them to surgical procedures when appropriate. We're not hoping to become a med spa per se; our goal, rather, is to simply expand our menu of services.

Syneron came earlier this week and did a demo and sales pitch for us, and Osyris is coming next week. From looking at this site, it seems that I should probably contact Candela and Sciton as well, but I would like to get some other opinions from those of you who have been through this and have more experience. We don't want to get stuck with a system that is much more than we need, nor do we want to end up with an expensive toy. Thank you in advance for your input.

dear rnleah,
there are as many opinions about the best equpiment and companies as there are practioners on this site. i would certainly encourage you to spend plenty of time doing your due diligence as these technologies all have their pluses and minuses. that being said, i can share my experience with sciton. i started in aesthetic laser medicine 4 yrs ago after having done endobronchial laser surgery since 1982. i could not afford 4-5 lasers for 4-5 applications so i opted for a platform system that would be upgradable- the sciton profile with modules for pulsed light (bbl), lhr (nd:yag 1064), spider veins (1064)-also do sclerosis, and erbium resurfacing. i have had only minor mechanical issues which were quickly resolved. the corporate culture at sciton seems (at least in my experience) to be suppotive of honesty in its sales force and education for its users after the sale. i have added the profractional head and then the profractional xc as upgrades and a new color screen was included. i now have essentially a new machine at a modest cost. i have been particularly impressed with the profract for resurfacing especially when combined with other modalities. results approach ( but do not equal) co2 resurfacing with lower risk of hyper/ hypo pigmentation and much(much) shorter downtime (< 1 week). i am currently doing a split face study comparing lower lid resurfacing traditional vs profract. i dont think any laser technology is great for upper lids (yet) and i send these pts. to my occuloplastic and plastics colleagues. another thing to look for is the true price to own these systems, some are less expensive initially but have per proceedure consumables which really add up. you or your surgeon are welcome to contact me by email and i will give you my # to call because i am a poor keyboardist and can't really cover any nuance in a typed post.

hope this is helpful,
r bowen m.d.
the center for positve aging and
west virginia university- east
martinsburg, wv
rbowen3710@msn.com

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