Stem Cell Facelift Made Woman Grow Bones on Her Eyes

A number of people are seriously considering facelift as a go-to to look younger. There are a lot of techniques being developed by surgeons in order to refine their procedures. And due to these novel techniques which are still unregulated by the government, many men and women are tempted to try these which results to an increase in the number of botched jobs.

In California, a woman in her sixties went for a facelift. Everything would have gone well but this procedure is still new and involves stem cells from fat in the abdomen area which are injected to her face to (supposedly) reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. She believed that it would rejuvenate the skin but, as it turned out, she was wrong.

She paid $20 000 for the stem cell facelift in one of the plastic surgery clinics in Beverly Hills. After a few months, she noticed that there is a clicking inside her eyes everytime she opens it. Not only that, there is pain associated with this clicking sound. She has to go to another plastic surgeon in order to seek a second opinion. Check here to get second opinion from a surgeon in Plano.

It has been found out that the clicking sound was due to the grinding of bone fragments in her eye. The plastic surgeon removed the bone fragments in an operation which lasted about 6 hours. The theory behind this phenomenon is that the stem cells which can differentiate into any cell type reacted to a common dermal filler which contain calcium components. Thus, it differentiated into bone cells.

According to her, the plastic surgeon who did the stem cell procedure did a liposuction from where they isolated the stem cells they injected on her face, particularly around her eye. She admits that she also had dermal filler then. The original doctor however forgot that one of the components of the dermal filler is calcium hydroxylapatite. This could have triggered the formation of bone cells on her eyes.

This case only opens our eyes on being cautious when it comes to plastic surgery. You have to make the right decisions before going under the knife. Plastic surgeons Plano are also responsible for the outcomes of their surgery but the patients are the ones who get to live with the results, whether good or bad. There may be new procedures that aim to provide better results but unless you hear it from reliable sources, don’t jump into the wagon just yet. 

New Rule Against Lax Prescribing Could Hurt Pain Patients

The New Year does not seem to be promising for pain management patients as Washington legislators passed a new law regarding prescriptions for pain patients.

Over the last several months, there have been reports that there’s a drastic increase in deaths related to prescription-drug overdose. And to put mitigate this, they have put out an order to a number of hospitals and doctors to stop taking in new patients and prescribing them with opiates. In some cases, current prescriptions are being suspended or cut off.

In the late 1980’s, it is said that the lax prescribing of opiates and pain medications. Before this time, studies have suggested that pain patients are not addressed properly and they are not given the right medications for their condition. However, afterwards, doctors have been liberal on prescribing pain medications and as opiates are increasingly prescribed, this could be the reason for the rising number of deaths.

Denis Murphy, 72 and suffering from a nerve disorder which he described to be as painful as “a blowtorch to my testicles”, fears that this new law would leave patients like him hurting. Pain medications are the only relief he has from the excruciating condition. He even has to change doctors because the previous one thinks he is not in pain at all.

Most chronic-pain patients are now concerned on how this new law would affect them. It is not going to take effect until 1 Jan 2013 but already some hospitals have turned down new patients. Pain patients can be demanding and this new rule would likely become an excuse for doctors not to see them, as speculated by the Washington State Medical Association and the Washington Academy of Family Physicians.

The board only wants to stop the death toll from rising, having seen the trend on drug overdose deaths. There are also a lot of factors to consider before prescribing a pill to a patient claiming to have chronic pain. This new law probably wants to remind doctors that overtreatment of chronic pain only leads to death and not cure according to Hootan Melamed, a pharmacist.  

The federal Institute of Medicine reports that there are 116M Americans suffering from chronic pain. However, the graphs and testimony that Dr. Alex Cahana, head of the UW's Division of Pain Medicine offered shows how many of these patients are probably addicted or dying from lax prescription.

Patients are in fear of having their prescriptions cut off while doctors are in not unanimously decided on this new pain management law.