How Will Kybella Injections Affect Business?
At a recent training session for physicians on Kybella injections, approximately 70% of the trainers were dermatologists, said Dr. Williams. That “kind of raised my eyebrows,” he said. “For those of us who are surgeons, it worries us a little bit.”
If Kybella catches on with patients, who will be doing most of the procedures? Will that mean that facial plastic surgeons will be handling fewer liposuctions?
Dr. Wolf said that, at his recent training session, the trainers were ocular plastic surgeons and facial plastic surgeons. Among the trainees, he said, were “a fair amount of plastic surgeons, a fair amount of facial plastic surgeons, and a fair amount of dermatologists.”
For now, he said, the company seems to be rolling out the treatment carefully, trying to keep it in the hands of capable physicians with whom patients should get favorable results.
But even in the long run, he said, he doesn’t expect the new treatment will cut much into liposuction treatment. When cool sculpting (controlled cooling for fat reduction) was first offered, he said, it was found at one physician’s practice that 65% of the patients for the procedure would never have opted for surgery. “I think that this procedure is not going to cut into neck liposuction to any significant degree,” he said. “It’s going to increase the number of people who are now looking to noninvasive plastic surgery as a modality.”—TC