Non-Surgical Procedures – Missoula, Montana

DR. STEPHEN HARDY: For an office in Montana, we do a great deal of noninvasive type of procedures here in our office. For example, the injectables, whether they be the neuromodulators, like Botox, which will decrease the muscle action, help decrease the muscle movement, say, up in the brow area, which then helps eliminate lines, which occur in the face from the muscle action. We do much more of that than I ever thought we would when we first moved to Montana. We do plenty of the other injectables, the filler type of things to help fill in some of the creases, to help fill in little lines in this area, whether it be Juvederm, Restylane, etc. There are a large number of different fillers that we will use. Other noninvasive procedures such as lasers. We have a huge assortment of lasers in the office, varying from the type of laser that will treat the reddish patches on the skin on children, that type of vascular laser, lasers that will treat brownish spots in aging skin, hair removal laser. We now have one of the new types of lasers, the fractionated lasers, where the laser beam is broken down into multiple smaller little beams, which will actually allow it to penetrate deeper without causing as much injury. So there is a broad array of lasers that we use. Again, the fractionated lasers for treating wrinkles or acne scars, the lasers for treating pigmentation spots, lasers for treating the reddish spots. Clearly the advantages are when people do not have the time to put into it. They can't take a couple of weeks off work, for example, and they will want to do something that's, well, let me try this and sort of slowly introduce themselves into the arena of making themselves look better and feel better. Just helping alter the aging process, so to speak. Rather than diving in with an eyelid procedure or a facelift, they'll try a little Botox to see if that can flatten out some of the wrinkles. They'll try some laser to help blend the skin, try to make it look a little bit smoother and to help treat some of the fine wrinkling on the face. So it works well from an economic standpoint. It's certainly a lot cheaper to do it that way. A lot less expensive to do it that way. And it's also a lot simpler. There's a lot less downtime for doing a lot of the laser procedures, so patients feel like it's a good way to start. And that's why we offer it because we feel like not everybody is a surgical candidate. You can sort of talk somebody into it, but it's not really the right thing to do. A lot of the time, it's best to stop them off with something relatively simple like a noninvasive procedure such as laser, Botox or a filler type of thing.