Do RealSelf Doctors Read the Botox Cosmetic Patient Medication Guide?

After reading doctors answers to patients who are clearly suffering from Botulism I am left wondering why their symptoms are not acknowledged as they are clearly spelled out in Allergan's Botox Cosmetic Medication Guide which is available on the web. The symptoms include anxiety,body weakness,vision changes,horseness,loss of voice,trouble speaking,loss of bladder control,trouble breathing and swallowing which are listed among the symptoms reported on this very forum.

Tags:

protocol side effects

Comment on this

4 Doctor Answers | Asked by Sdp in Spring, TX

Doctor Answers (4)
Community Comments (0)

Diagnoses are made with more than a collection of list of symptoms

The character of a symptom and list of different symptoms help doctors make diagnoses but just having a few symptoms of a disease does not make a disease. The quality and quantity of symptoms are important. If someone is coming down with mild headache, muscle aches, feeling warm but no fever when they were exposed to someone who had an upper respiratory viral illness does not mean the person has the flu if they are mounting a defense reaction to the influenza virus. For the same reason, one... more

Botox guide confirms safety

Here's what the Medication Guide says: "There has not been a confirmed serious case of spread of toxin effect away from the injection site when BOTOX has been used at the recommended dose to treat severe underarm sweating, blepharospasm, or strabismus, or when BOTOX Cosmetic has been used at the recommended dose to treat frown lines." This is FDA-approved wording, so none of the symptoms you mention have occurred with cosmetic use of Botox. The safety record of Botox in its 20+... more

Botox Cosmetic Patient Medication Guide

The FDA requires that drugs list every possible side effect that was ever mentioned during a clinical study in their patient education materials. For many drugs, i.e., even aspirin, Aleve, etc. the same types of symptoms are included that you mention in your list for the Botox Cosmetic Patient Medication Guide. If a study is done on 5,000 participants and even one person in the study mentions a possible side effect, it gets included in the literature. The reason that most of us on the site... more

If you are treated with a botulinum toxin product and have unwanted side effects, yes its botulism.

You are absolutely right. Unwanted side effects from cosmetic botulinum toxin do constitute a form of mild botulism. However it is a bit inflammatory to characterize what is generally very mild symptoms this way. Generally botulism is associated with massive intoxication and life threatening symptoms. This simply is not what is seen from the minimal side-effect associated with cosmetic botulinum toxin. For this reason, doctors to not find it useful to talk about... more