You were looking in the mirror the other day, just like every other day, and you decided that your face looked a little uneven. Hmm, what’s a person to do?
Well, if you’re like most Canadians, you keep calm and carry on with an uneven face, perhaps doing other cosmetic things to distract the gaze of others away from your facial imperfection. Or, if you have disposable income, you can book an appointment to your nearest and most trusted medi-spa, where you can get fillers injected into your face to sort of, you know, plump it up and sort of even it out.
Recently, another option has emerged, one known as a PDO (polydioxalone) thread lift, a procedure that spas claim can mimic the effects of a facelift without the surgery and can be performed in the time it takes to have one’s lunch. With no attempt to be punny, it’s basically an in-and-out procedure, although not quite with the drive-thru window. And all for a little more that $2000 a pop. You come back from lunch a new man or woman or neither or both, and the results are advertised as lasting as long as two years. It’s sort of an intermediary step between doing nothing, using fillers, or getting the much more expensive facelift.
A practitioner uses a needle at the end of a thin tube, called a cannula, to push a relatively long and barbed suture into the face and neck of the patient. The sutures, or threads, are intended to prompt collagen production in the area of the thread, leading the facial skin to become tighter and smoother. The sutures themselves dissolve within the body.
Unless they don’t.
Sutures have long been a part of both major and minor surgeries, and self-dissolving ones are the key to closing off wounds, especially inside the body. But it’s worth noting that no suture used in Canada today for any reason is approved by Health Canada for cosmetic procedures. Health practitioners are allowed to use PDOs for cosmetic purposes in what is called an “off-label use” of a medical device, but advertising such a practice is prohibited. It sort of makes you wonder. Why would a procedure be allowed to take place yet not allowed to be advertised? Maybe because off-label use means it hasn’t been tested and evaluated by Health Canada as being safe for the purpose intended. So I guess the non-advertising is the compromise. Even so, there are clinics that fish for patients on platforms like TicTok and Instagram that come close to violating the prohibition on advertising, some even claiming that their “threads” are, in fact, approved by Health Canada for use in the procedure. They are not.
To me, it sounds pretty sleazy, and I can see the litigants lining up for lawsuits of varying degrees in the future, if not right now, when things go wrong, as they do.
As time goes by, more and more people are getting the procedure done, meaning that over time, more and more people have discovered that the procedure either didn’t work or worked negatively against them by prompting other skin issues, like dimpling, to occur. Some people have literally spent thousands yet discern no appreciable results for the money spent. It seems to me that more careful scrutiny of this practice might be in order.
How is it that a procedure can be performed in Canada using materials not approved for purpose by Health Canada? Canadians can’t buy nail clippers or buy milk and vegetables without some level of Health Canada approval. Why would it be any different for a procedure involving a needle at the end of a tube laying down barbed thread inside your face?
I was looking in the mirror this morning, as I do all mornings, and decided that my face was a bit uneven. Hell, it’s a lot uneven.
In my case, I guess that’s the way she’s gonna stay.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 