Visalia, Calif. — A plastic surgeon here has received a public letter of reprimand from the Medical Board of California after injecting several patients with a botulinum toxin not approved by the FDA, reports the Visalia Times-Delta.
According to the Times-Delta, Thomas Mitts, M.D., who has practiced in Visalia for nearly 30 years, used a product distributed by Toxin Research International, an Arizona-based company, that has never been FDA approved, a fact Dr. Mitts says he was not aware of at the time he used the product.
The FDA says the Toxin Research product has been linked to four cases in which patients were hospitalized after receiving injections from doctors who tried to pass the substance off as Botox.
The Medical Board’s reprimand, issued in May, states that Dr. Mitts administered the unapproved substance to four or five patients. Dr. Mitts says a doctor who worked in his office attended a conference in Phoenix in 2002 and ordered two vials of a substance that was advertised as being an FDA-approved, generic Botox, reports the Times-Delta. Dr. Mitts says that in 2002, after using one vial on four to five patients, he was dissatisfied with the results and threw the second vial away.
The Times-Delta reports that according to the Associated Press, some doctors who have administered the fake Botox have been sentenced to a year of probation, and that a Cameron Park, Calif., physician who pleaded guilty in May to injecting patients with a product he was passing off as the Allergan product, faces up to two years in prison and $200,000 in fines.
