According to Dr. Chopra, this is the first study to evaluate the impact of a broad spectrum of minimally invasive cosmetic procedures, including injectables and lasers, on the happiness and life satisfaction of treatment non-naive patients.
“Surprisingly, we found these patients were no happier after treatment,” he told this news organization. “However, before rushing to declare that cosmetic procedures don’t make us happier, it is critical to evaluate these results in the context of our study population. We believe there to be a distinction between treatment naive and non-naive patients. All the patients in our study were treatment non-naive, routinely and frequently undergoing cosmetic procedures. Moreover, our treatment non-naive patients were very happy at baseline prior to treatment.”
He and his colleagues hypothesize that there is a “ceiling effect” to the happiness one can attain via these procedures. “Our treatment non-naive patients had already reached this ceiling-peak happiness of their treatment journey, and at this point were only pursuing procedures to maintain their results and happiness,” he said. “Thus, we were unable to measure any effect this late in the ‘maintenance-phase’ of their journey via our study. On the other hand, treatment naive patients (those who have never undergone a cosmetic procedure) were not included. We hypothesize that evaluating patients at the start of their journey after their first round of treatments will demonstrate an impact on happiness, prior to reaching the ceiling and subsequent ‘maintenance phase.’ ”
Lawrence J. Green, MD, clinical professor of dermatology at George Washington University, Washington, who was asked to comment on the study results, said that it was not clear which specific cosmetic treatments the study participants received. “I would like to see if different injectable or device treatments would give different happiness scale results,” Dr. Green said.
Dr. Lawrence J. Green
“In addition, only two locations were surveyed, so the results could have location bias. I think it would be a great idea to replicate this survey of experienced cosmetic treatment patients with many locations and to include survey responses based on the procedure that was done. That said, it is interesting that overall, investigator satisfaction did not correlate with patient happiness from the treatments.”
Dr. Chopra reported having no financial disclosures. Dr. Green disclosed that he is a speaker, consultant, or investigator for numerous pharmaceutical companies.