Lifestyle Lift & Posting False Reviews Online?

Was Lifestyle Lift "Astroturfing" (posing as clients and posting false reviews)?

I was looking around at a number of allegations of medical businesses that have been accused recently of using their employees to post fake comments on physician rating sites and was pointed to this Wikipedia entry about Lifestyle Lift and allegations by the New York State Attorney General's office that Lifestyle Lift had been 'Astroturfing' back in 2009.

(Via Wikipedia)

 Lifestyle Lift has faced numerous complaints about the accuracy of their advertising. The company and its procedures have been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox News, and in newspapers and magazines across America, some of which were critical of their practices. In 2006 Lifestyle Lift voluntarily participated in a review of its advertising materials with the Better Business Bureaus's National Advertising Division. This review produced a 10-page document which made several suggestions for improvement, all of which were adopted by Lifestyle Lift. One was that pictures taken of patients tended to amplify problem spots, and benefits post-surgery, by using different photographic techniques. The BBB summarized by stating that "disclaimers must not contradict the main message conveyed by an advertisement", and "'before' and 'after' photographs should be taken in a uniform manner". 

In 2008, the company brought suit in United States federal court against the website RealSelf.com, which solicits anonymous consumer reviews of cosmetic procedures. Lifestyle Lift claimed that RealSelf's practice of allowing competing cosmetic surgeons to advertise as offering a "Lifestyle Lift" was a trademark violation. The courts deemed the website's activities to be protected First Amendment speech, and the lawsuit was later settled. 

In July 2009, the New York State Attorney General's office charged Lifestyle Lift with "astroturfing," or posting fake consumer reviews on the Internet, and reached a settlement in which the company paid $300,000 in penalties and costs. According to the AG's office, Lifestyle Lift employees were instructed to create accounts on Internet message boards and pose as satisfied customers, and created web sites such as "MyFaceliftStory.com", designed to disseminate positive reviews appearing as if they were created by independent and satisfied customers. They also attacked genuine customers who posted critical messages about Lifestyle Lift on other sites, and took steps to get those posts removed. The AG's investigation discovered emails specifically instructing employees to engage to post on the web; one such message directed an employee to "devote the day to doing more postings on the Web as a satisfied client"

(Note: I've never been involved with Lifestyle Lifts or Swift Lift in any way but we did perform a different endoscopic suture plication facelift called Point Lift that we developed independently. Point Lift was eventually dropped after we found the results to be lackluster and the incidence of unhappy patients and complications to be higher than acceptable.)

In my experience, these kinds of lawsuits happen from time to time and it's more an inditement of some shoddy business practices than of the medical treatment.

I'm aware that there are a number of physicians who are performing Lifestyle Lifts now and I'm curious to find out what their opinion of the treatment and patient satisfaction in general.

This kind of stuff can quickly get out of control, even on an individual clinic level. The whole 'fake physician review' deal is one of the reasons that we're promoting Frontdesk's verified physician review and customer satisfaction marketing system that actually takes some steps to make sure that your happy clients have a voice that gives a clear representation of what your patients actually think.

Link: Frontdesk's Customer Satisfaction Review Marketing System

Plastic Surgery Face Lift.. Or Stem Cells From Korea?

The same company in Korea that's cloning dogs and cats is now offering anti-aging treatemtns that are being touted as a delaying tactic for plastic surgery and face lifts:

Those who view aging as an ugly inconvenience usually turn to plastic surgery to nip and tuck their troubles away. Little do they know the answer for reversing the aging process might be found in their own stomachs.

Run in conjunction with the Beijing Tian Tan Puhua Hospital, which offers stem cell therapies to last-hope Parkinson’s and spinal cord injury patients, the RNL Puhua Plastic and Cosmetic Medical Center offers stem cell therapy for the face that may reverse the aging process using the patient’s own body matter.

Using a treatment developed by Korean company RNL Bio—the same company that clones dogs and sells them on the international market for upwards of USD$150,000—the Puhua Center offers non-invasive beauty treatment alongside traditional plastic surgery staples like liposuction, face peels and eye tucks.

For a cool ¥28,000, patients can have fat cells removed from their abdomens using a needle and local anesthetic. Two weeks later, after doctors have grown a crop of stem cells from the collected fat cells, patients return to have doctors inject the stem cells into their faces in a series of shots that plump out skin, erase wrinkles and generally take a decade off your appearance, says Ingela Palomäki, a former Beijing Tian Tan Puhua Hospital marketing representative and current director of Fortune Cookie, a stem cell product import/export company. Included in the price is a stem-cell top-up six months later. Patients can also have their stem cells stored at the clinic for ¥1,500 per year. Stem cells have a shelf life of about 15 years. The clinic is currently the only place in the world offering the therapy, Palomäki says.

RNL Bio flew in aging South Korean celebrity Kyung-gyu Lee for a test-run of the treatment at the clinic’s inauguration less than half a year ago.

“Koreans are flocking here by the busloads for the treatment,” Palomäki says. “It’s buying time.”

Because the treatment uses the patient’s own cells, there is no risk of the body rejecting the injections, she points out. The only concern is that the stem cells could copy cancer cells in the body—so cancer patients and survivors will want to take a pass.

While the U.S. and other countries weigh the benefits of stem cell therapies, many patients from abroad are already coming to Beijing for therapies they hope might make them forever young.

This use of technology solutionos around bio-engineering and stem cells could well percipitate a break through. Nanotechnology is an other area that offers the promise of using a nonsurgical medical technology in lieu of traditional plastic surgery.

Thermage and Botox are examples of technology that sprang from other areas of medicine in just this way.