Andrea,
Thanks for the welcome. Just so you know a little about Sona, we currently have open three company owned centers, three franchsie centers and one affiliate (pre franchise center in process of converting to franchise center). These are in Portland OR, St Louis, Minneapolis, Virginia Beach, Newport News, Richmond, and Charlotte. Additional centers will be opening beginning in early 2003 in Sacramento, Dallas, Las Vegas, Raleigh and Tampa. Hopefully with more to come threafter. We are targeting the top 100 markets in the US.
Regarding the % efficacy and support. As you know studies are all over the place on results. Two studies specifically used the 755nm alexandrite lasers (we use Cynosure 9300 and their YAG for types IV abd V). One “A structured treatment protocol improves results with laser hair removal” by Bruce Freedman and Robert Early on 200 patients (100 in a test group and 100 in a control group)Resulted in 78=-8% reduction in hair with 4 tx. Another, “Long-term evaluation of the Long-pulsed Alexandrite laser for removal of bikini hair at shortened tx intervals” by Jennifer Lloyd, DO and Mirko Mirkov, PHD was on a small study of only 11 patients with 4tx and the results were a median 86% reduction 1 year after their last tx.
We have not done a scientific study on Sona patients so our results tend to be anecdotal based on our managers experience with 1000’s of clients. With our patients, the hardest areas to get good results seem to be mens backs and womens chins.
For our Sona centers using our parameters our experience seems to be somewhat better than these studies. For dark hair a 90 to 95% hair reduction at the end of a treatment cycle seems to be reasonable expectation as an average. Our treatment cycle varies in duration based on anatomical area of the body but consists of 5 treatments and a 6th touchup. This can be affected fairly significantly by tans on backs shoulders, face, and neck especially and thus needing to either delay Tx or reduce power parameters, thereby reducing efficacy. We try to keep our staff and franchisee staff from promising total hair free results because that just isn’t possible for a portion of the population. However we do have some clients that achieve this result. As with any medical procedure, you can do everything perfect and still get unusual results based on who know what- hormone changes, etc.
Meladine is distributed by Creative Technologies to laser hair removal offices around the country.
At the ASDS meeting in Chicago last week a presentation was made as per below.
Treatment of Blonde &
Non-Pigmented Facial Hair:
USE OF A MELANIN-CONTAINING SOLUTION
PRIOR TO LASER-ASSISTED HAIR REMOVAL
NOVEMBER 3, 2002
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR DERMATOLOGIC SURGERY
ELIZABETH L. TANZI, MD & TINA S. ALSTER, MD
WASHINGTON INSTITUTE OF DERMATOLOGIC LASER SURGERY
They would probably give you the results of their study directly.
Our center’s results have been good with the 2 week protocol advance meladine useage prior to tx for blond and vellus hair, but we have found a longer 4 week advance useage of Meladine is needed for courser grey and white hair. Not sure if this is due to the diameter of the hair or due to the depth of the hair follacle or both? In our experience, this is the only option for treating grey, blond, white and vellus hair with lasers. Results are not up to the dark hair results but still good.
I hope this answers your questions. Fell free to email me if you would like. I may not keep up very well with this board if I’m very busy.