Abstract
With nearly 11.7 million surgical and nonsurgical aesthetic procedures performed in the United States in 2007 and 82% of this total encompassing nonsurgical procedures (American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons [ASAPS], 2008), we can clearly see that there is a trend toward less invasive procedures and an expansion of new technologies, medications, and products. Since 1997, ASAPS reports a 754% increase in nonsurgical procedures. Hyaluronic acid (HA) dermal fillers were rated as number 2 of the top five nonsurgical procedures in 2007 (1,448,716 procedures). We can only speculate that there will be another dramatic increase in these numbers in the 2008 statistics and beyond as more dermal fillers become Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved and widely used in the United States.
In this issue of Journal Club, we are focusing our attention on dermal fillers that either contain lidocaine or have had lidocaine mixed into the product by the practitioner prior to injection (off-label use). This may be a direction we see more dermal filler products moving toward as further clinical trials take place and more products get released in the U.S. aesthetic marketplace. For some aesthetic nurse injectors, it may seem like "back to the future," as many of us who began using dermal fillers in the 1980s and early "1990s" only had experience with a product that contained lidocaine-bovine collagen.