April 3, 2009
If you're curious how many laser complications truly occur in this country, you're probably not the only one.
Physicians at the American Society of Laser Medicine and Surgery meeting report a need for greater scrutiny and reporting of laser complications, whether the side effects are minor or severe. This morning discussion marked one of the first pre-conference sessions during the first day of the show, being held in National Harbor, Md., through Sunday.
Currently, laser users are asked to report serious side effects, such as death, to manufacturers. The manufacturer, in turn, reports these events to the Food and Drug Administration, which keeps this data on an obscure public Web site. The site, attendees stated, currently is static with no content.
In the spirit of collaboration, panelists and attendees at this morning's sessions discussed the prospect of creating a more centralized reporting system, so physicians could better share and disseminate this information. But the medical culture itself may exclude this possibility.
"It's difficult in the meeting to even organize a session on complications because people don't like to stand up and say look what I did," says Rox Anderson, MD, the director of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. "I think it would behoove all of us to do this." But it's clear this move could have unwanted results-particularly in a litigious environment, says Dr. Anderson, who is a panelist in the discussion.
"It's not just the manufacturer," says Jeffrey S. Dover, MD, FRCPC, who is a dermatologist and associate clinical professor at Yale University School of Medicine, as well as the co-director of SkinCare Physicians in Chestnut Hill, Mass. "There is a culture in medicine that we don't report what we do. No one is going to do this unless it is anonymous."