The purpose of the breast reduction is to remove the excess weight from the patient’s chest. The reason that is a good procedure is that the complaints that patients come in with the neck and the back hurts and have notching on the shoulders. This usually is something that has bothered them all their life, using early in life for other reasons but as they age they tend to get more and more pains, chronic pains in their back and neck. When you remove the excess weight from the chest, the first thing the patients say is that my neck and back have stopped hurting, to the last patient they have always said I wish I had done this 15 years ago.
In terms of breast lift this tends to come more toward women who have had children in the middle portion of life where they have lost volume but want to increase the volume typically with breast augmentation or with an augmentation with a lift and then you place the nipple in the exact appropriate position. This usually can be done in one procedure. Sometimes it does take two procedures and then in the very end everyone is very happy with the result because now it is back to the way it looked before they had the children.
In terms of breast augmentation, it tends to be a younger patient does not necessarily have to be to increase the volume and perkiness of the breast. There are so many different ones and we will discuss all the specifics when they come in for consultation, but in general it is a saline breast implant or silicone breast implant which has come back in the market. Ninety-nine percent of the patients are very happy with what this achieves. I have never had to remove for increase in size or exchange for decrease in size. We are able to hit it pretty close exactly to what they want when they say they want a C-cup or D-cup size.
Procedures associated with the breast with breast reduction, breast augmentation, breast-lift and removal of breast tissue for gynecomastia, which is enlargement of the male breast. Usually the breast augmentation in the early in life is just trying to increase the size and perkiness of the breast. After children, sometimes the volume has deflated so you are try to increase the volume of the breast and make it perkier and what you would do for that is a breast-lift or an augmentation or a combination of the two. A breast reduction, however, would be for removal of breast tissue and that is more of a genetic issue for women who have a much larger breast and complain of neck and back pain associated with it. The last category tends to be for men. Most men you know think about breast tissue but it is mostly fat in those areas and in those particular areas you would do liposuction and a small surgical incision to remove the breast tissue. Each of these procedure is designed to enhance whatever you have or remove excess that you might have so you can look better in your clothes and feel better.
Anyone concerned with their face, things like that with the Band-Aid Facelift or the Mini Facelift have a concern with wrinkles or lines on the face and these can be helped by a lot of things, but the main ones are Botox and fillers and with fillers of Radiesse, Restylane, and collagen. Any line that has become etched on the face just to fill it out. It is not going to remove it completely. It is temporary, but even if you have a facelift, you are going to still have to have a few of those etch lines that will not be removed by a facelift. Botox on the other hand removes those lines that are formed by muscles around the eyes in between the eyebrows and the forehead and what it gives you is a rested look. It does not freeze your face as some people say. If it is done correctly, you should look rested, youthful and very happy.
The difference between the traditional facelift and the Band-Aid or Mini Facelift that I do has to do with extent. Some people need more skin removed, typically the patients for the Band-Aid Facelift are a little younger or have already had a facelift. It is not that they are that much difference because the same procedures that are used for or the same techniques that are used for the traditional facelift are used for the Band-Aid Facelift and in both cases we are going for a very natural look. I think we have achieved that in all our patients and patients are very happy with either one that they use. The differences tend to be that you have general anesthesia with the traditional facelift. It is a more extensive procedure so there is more bruising and swelling, but the recovery is just as easy and you will see patients come out just as happy with either procedure and they are very natural looking.
Traditional facelift is pretty standardized. It has been set that way and when I learned the technique in New York and the procedure is about two and a half hours, it is under general anesthesia. The effects are a little more dramatic than you would see with a Band-Aid Facelift but you do not have to make on that, you can adjust them to each patient where they have a little more excess skin under the chin, a little more excess skin along the jawline and this needs to be addressed because you have to do a little bit larger procedure where you go further out on the face. The results can be made to look very natural and I am proud of myself for making people look natural.
Many advantages that you will find with the Band-Aid facelift or Mini Facelift is something that was driven by my patients and that is they did not want to go through the long time of a regular facelift and did not want to go through the long recovery time, the bruising, the excess swelling, the longer incisions, so the Band-Aid Facelift that you kind of overcome those disadvantages. It is a two-hour procedure from the time you walk in to the time you leave. With local anesthesia, you can get some conscious sedation of Valium or something like that if you need it, 90 percent of my patients just go with local anesthesia and the advantage of that is that you leave without the effects of general anesthesia or you can drive yourself home. It is real surgery but it is manageable and the effects are manageable too and that patients look like a little like me 10 years ago and that can be achieved with the Band-Aid Facelift.
When we talk about fillers and Botox, both actually have a very complementary role to a mini facelift or a regular facelift. The patients will come in a lot of times trying to put those procedures off because they are afraid of surgery and rightly so they are nervous about the pain and the expense, but at some point, you will see that there is excess skin on the face and that is basically what the facelift does. It removes excess skin. So, do not think of them, as one versus the other is complementary like the cake and the icing. Even after you have a Mini Facelift or a regular traditional facelift, you are still going to need some Botox or some Restylane, you just need less of it.
When it comes to aging of the face then the standard technique would be a facelift. The original surgery was developed probably 30 years ago and it is a traditional facelift. You try to make it look very natural and in that reason and in that effort to make that look natural progressed to doing a smaller procedure, which I accomplished through the Band-Aid facelift and you can apply it specifically to younger patients, older patients, primarily the patients somewhere between 45 and 55 who do not really need that removal of excess skin that you would with a traditional facelift and the other areas that you see are somebody has already had a facelift and just needs a little touchup. The advantages are local anesthesia, less recovery time, less bruising, less swelling and the cost is about half of a traditional facelift. Both techniques work great and it is about picking, which is the appropriate procedure for the right patient.
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