Our aim: To offer our patients medicalised centres
By Thierry Piolatto
New “Cyrnos” medical aesthetics centres are being opened in the south-east of France, with six centres in the pipeline. The two founders, Dr Philippe Kestemont and Dr Frédéric Braccini, look back at their origins and explain their positioning.
Dr Philippe Kestemont: “We wanted to open medical aesthetics centres with stringency and excellence as our benchmarks, based on the feedback we have gleaned, with a safe and medicalised overtone. For many years, we have been involved in developing and teaching aesthetic medicine, as well as dealing with complications connected with hyaluronic acid or botulinum toxin injections.
“Fake injectors” have come along and discredited aesthetic medicine, sometimes causing extremely serious complications, which we have then had to deal with (hyaluronic acid and necrosis, botulinum toxin and laryngeal paralysis requiring intensive care, etc.). This situation led us to make the following analysis: we need to make this practice as safe as possible. It is not easy for patients or for our peers to find centres that can provide the correct care, in good conditions and 24/7. A great many hospitals are not equipped with hyaluronidase and very few doctors are trained to use it. We see the same problem with complications that arise after laser hair removal procedures, such as serious burns. We have included a fallback agreement with other clinics: at any moment, a patient can find someone to talk to, which was the starting point for creating these centres.”
Cyrnos, a nod to Corsica!
Named after the Greek word for Corsica, the Cyrnos centres all have a scientific committee made up of doctors and surgeons who have been training and teaching for years. Each centre is managed by a supervising practitioner, who include: Dr Aurélien Martinage (plastic surgeon), Dr Soraya Sadi (maxillofacial surgeon), Dr Christophe Cornil (plastic surgeon), Dr Olivier Raybaud (ENT and surgeon of the face and neck) and Dr Jean-Marc Ponzio (aesthetics doctor and trainer).
A healthcare group provides the centres with financial backing and keeps a close eye on the implementation and monitoring of all of the “processes” for development. The doctors are given regular training in injection techniques and how to manage complications, as the centres’ aim was to offer a specific blueprint with the same standard of care regardless of the centre or doctor visited, emergency contact numbers and transfers to larger structures in the event of any significant problems.
Strong presence in southeastern France
Since the founders were already well established in the south-east of France, centres have already been set up in two departments – Alpes Maritime and Var – and will soon be coming to Corsica. The pilot centre is located in Nice, and centres are already open in Draguignan, Fréjus and Sophia Antipolis. To come: Beaulieu sur Mer and Ile Rousse. Other collaborations have been initiated outside of the region due to a request for scientific and logistical support, as some establishments were lacking in trained doctors and medical management. Thanks to the various university diplomas and interuniversity diplomas, including ones in injectables and hair, the Cyrnos centres have a large pool of doctors who are involved in aesthetic medicine and can work there either on a part-time or full-time basis. A number of other doctors will join the group in the future.
A multi-product technical platform
The centres’ aim is to offer both a multi-product technical platform supplied by existing laboratories and fully-trained nursing staff, with the aim of making every structure medicalised. For Dr Kestemont, “The health authorities and the Medical Council often complain about the lack of medical and paramedical support available in many establishments. The health authorities set us rigorous standards and we have met them at every step: contracts, pay, staff, qualifications. Our ambition is to be certified, a bit like an ISO standard. Today everything complies to these standards, as our aim is to offer medicalised centres that are sanitised, have high-quality equipment, referenced products, and a real medical presence.” In addition to dealing with any complications, the centres offer a whole range of medical aesthetics treatments: filler injections, toxin injections, tensor threads, laser tattoo removal, anti-wrinkle treatments, hair removal, radiofrequency with microneedling, mesotherapy, HydraFacial, and more. The partners have unparalleled experience in the existing techniques.
We are also looking into hair transplants, whose procedures must be carried out in optimal and ethical conditions.
What about the future?
Over the next five years, the aesthetic medicine sector is likely to go through significant changes (such as the introduction of an interuniversity degree in aesthetic medicine) but the Cyrnos centres should be capable of offering fully-trained doctors or doctors-in-training thanks to the high number of members currently at university, a non-negligible asset for structures that want to be developed further. We are always open to inviting new doctors in and training them up.
Positioning: doctors at the centre of the project
For Dr Braccini, “90% of our doctors are specialists, many are surgeons. We want to build a good reputation for this speciality, which will have its own diploma in the near future, and we want to boost this development by offering high-quality care. We are going through a difficult time as we are lacking doctors in all specialities, so one of our ideas was to group all medical aesthetics specialists together instead of having them all spread around, which can sometimes give this speciality a bad image. We have a code of ethics, continuing professional development, a “university” image, with doctors who all teach at universities. We want to block the activity of fake injectors, who are an all-too-easy alternative to waiting times that patients deem to be too long. Our centres respond to this situation and we want to break this cycle that leads to dissatisfaction and complications.”
Where to find us? 18 avenue Saint-Jean-Baptiste 06 000 Nice
More infos: Cyrnos-esthetique.fr
