Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Articles

Knowing How to Speed Up the Cosmetic Surgery Recovery Process is a delicate balance. The prospective cosmetic surgery patient is much better educated than they were even just a few years ago. They’re entering the initial consultation with a pretty clearly defined idea of the procedure they want and what it’s going to entail.

By that I mean they understand that there’s going to be a certain degree of bruising and swelling. That knowledge, however, doesn’t always soften the shock.

Even in the hands of a skilled, board-certified plastic surgeon, a cosmetic procedure is still a type of trauma from which the body must heal. Your body can’t distinguish between tripping and scraping your knee and a doctor taking a scalpel to your chin. Which is to say the bruising and swelling can be expected. But there are a few things you can do to ensure a speedy recovery.

Self-care after surgery
Let me preface the tips that follow by saying that the single-most effective thing you can do to ensure a complete recovery is to follow your doctor’s post-care recommendations. That means keeping dressings and compresses on until you’re told to remove them. If you had a procedure performed on your face or neck, you may be told to sleep with your held elevated for the first few weeks. Stop taking any blood-thinning medications or supplements. It also means, above all, being a diligent observer of what you’re seeing and feeling.

Beyond that, simply take care of yourself. Don’t smoke. Avoid alcohol for at least the first few days. Drink lots of water. Stay out of the sun (exposure can deepen the color of bruises). Avoid strenuous activity, including exercise, for the first few weeks after surgery. And get plenty of sleep. Again, your body needs time to recover fully, and to enable your immune system to work at its full capacity.

When to return to normal activity
You may have a ready-made excuse for avoiding the gym for a while, but you’ll want to get out of bed and at least walk around the house a bit as soon as you feel up to it. It’s essential to promote healthy circulation and discourage the development of clots.

If the bruising makes you self-conscious, you should be able to mask it with makeup after a few days, but clear it with your doctor first. And steer clear of open wounds and stitches.

It’s a natural concern ahead of any situation where we anticipate some level of physical or emotional pain, as if we could somehow brace ourselves, mentally, and blunt it just a little bit.

So, let’s address the elephant in the room: How Long Will it Take to Recover from Plastic Surgery?

Unfortunately, there’s no precise way to answer that question in the context of cosmetic plastic surgery (or, really, any other context) because pain is subjective. But I can give you a general sense of what you can expect. We’ll get to that in just a moment.

More importantly—because this is something you can control—so much of recovering from plastic surgery comes down to having a plan and following it. Your doctor’s going to provide you with a set of post-care recommendations before your procedure. But, treating them more like hard and fast rules is the surest path to a speedy recovery.

Your mobility’s going to be very limited for the first few days, so stock up on everything you’re going to need, from bandages to groceries. And schedule more time off than your doctor estimates your recovery time will be. That’ll alleviate the stress that could crop up with unexpected delays. Stress hinders the body’s ability to heal. Ideally, put yourself in a bubble for a week or two and focus solely on your recovery.

Pain & Discomfort
One patient’s post-operative ache is another’s throbbing. Pain is personal, and for that reason, it’s never discounted. Appropriate pain medications are prescribed to help minimize the discomfort.

Generally, the discomfort is fairly minimal with cosmetic facial procedures and slightly more with liposuction. Operations that require elevation or tightening of the muscles, such as a tummy tuck, have a post-operative pain level that many equate to a C-section.

Bruising and swelling
In the first few days following surgery, the bruising will be a dark black, purple, or blue—which can look even more traumatizing when it’s in a highly visible place, like the face. But it should begin to lighten up by the fifth or sixth day and subside completely within two weeks.

The swelling, similarly, is going to be its worst over the first few days after the surgery. It’ll begin to go down after a week, and within two weeks, the swelling should reduce by about 75 percent. Six weeks out, almost all of it should dissipate. Any lingering swelling will go down over the next few months.

The recovery period
The length of the recovery period following plastic surgery depends on the procedure and the patient. Most will need assistance for the first couple of days. They should be able to manage on their own from that point, but they may still need help caring for small children.

To give you a basic idea, these are approximations for a few popular procedures:

Breast surgery — Almost everyone is able to move around on their own by the second day after the operation. And, as long as their job doesn’t entail heavy lifting, they should be able to return to work within a week.

Liposuction — It depends on the number of areas treated, but most can get around on their own by the second day. And they resume normal activities within a week.

Tummy tuck — Most will need three of four days before they’re comfortable walking around without help. The recovery is almost identical to a C-section.

Facelift — Many are usually out of bed by the second day, but it could take up to a week before they’re comfortable venturing outside and two weeks before returning to work.

Keep in mind, these estimates only really cover the most immediate phases of a patient’s recuperation. Comfortably moving around the house is very different from returning to even modest exercise. In fact, you’ll want to avoid any vigorous activity during the first two weeks to minimize the risks of bleeding, swelling, and bruising.

In the case of a facelift, for example, most of the stitches are usually removed between days four and 14. But there may still be some mild swelling and numbness for several weeks, or even longer. So, even if you do feel ready to do more, error on the side of caution and allow your body the rest it needs to fully recover.

Cosmetic plastic surgery has never been more popular. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 7.7 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2017. That’s a two-percent jump over 2016, when there was an increase in both surgical and minimally-invasive procedures in every age group.

That trend largely continued in 2017. What that indicates is that while 40- to 54-year-olds still account for the great majority of cosmetic procedures at 49 percent of the total, more and more people are having plastic surgery done at younger ages.

What, then, is the “right age” for cosmetic plastic surgery? That’s a question that can and should only be answered on an individual basis because it’s a deeply personal decision. But as the stigma that was once attached to plastic surgery continues to fall away, I think what we’re seeing is it becoming a viable option to more people.

And as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ annual report shows, there are a multitude of reasons that people of all ages are seeking it out. Here’s a quick overview of the most popular cosmetic procedures by age group.

13- to 19-year-olds
Keep in mind, this group still represents the smallest segment of the cosmetic plastic surgery market at about one percent of the total number of procedures performed in 2017, or 229,000 procedures.

Rhinoplasty, or nose-reshaping surgery, has long been, and continues to be, the most popular surgical procedure among teens for a distinct reason: The structure and shape of the nose is fully formed by puberty. Generally, they’re encouraged to hold off on other cosmetic procedures because the rest of their bodies are still developing, though more than twice as many laser hair removal procedures were performed in 2017 than nose-reshaping surgeries.

20 to 29
Close to 86,000 20- to 29-year-olds opted for breast augmentation, which remains the most popular type of surgical procedure overall, with over 300,000 procedures performed in 2017, a three percent increase over 2016. Again, though, including minimally-invasive procedures—which we should because they accounted for 90 percent of all cosmetic plastic surgery in 2017—laser hair removal wins by a landslide, at close to 233,000 procedures.

30 to 39
Surgically, breast augmentation was the most popular and liposuction was a distant runner-up. Including minimally-invasive procedures, injection treatments, such as Botox, were the clear favorite, with more than 1.3 million procedures performed in 2017, a two-percent increase over the previous year.

40 to 54
So what’s the most avid segment of the cosmetic plastic surgery market having done? The top five surgical procedures, from most popular to least, were: liposuction, eyelid surgery, breast augmentation, tummy tuck, and nose reshaping. On the minimally-invasive side, more than 4.1 million injection procedures (Botox) and 1.25 million soft-tissue fillers, such as Juvederm, were performed.

55 and over
The 55-and-over segment was only marginally less enthusiastic about injection procedures (about 1.7 million) and soft-tissue fillers (nearly 930,000). Though it was even more game for a chemical peel (almost 593,000). Eyelid surgery was the most common surgical procedure, followed close behind by facelifts.

Behind the numbers
These results follow some universal concerns about our appearance as we get older. Cosmetic plastic surgery was long perceived as a superficial pursuit of youth. But these numbers and my daily interactions with patients describe a different story. For the most part, these procedures are helping people across every age group align their appearance with the person inside, whether it’s a self-conscious teen, a new mother, or a retiree who feels 20 years younger than her age.

So there’s no “right age” for cosmetic plastic surgery. It’s the will that matters most.

The number of cosmetic injection treatments, like Botox, performed in the United States has grown more than 800 percent since 2000, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. That makes it the fastest-growing, minimally-invasive procedure.

To meet that surging demand (and, of course, benefit from it), there’s been a massive influx of barely-qualified providers. In many cases, their only qualification is a weekend course that taught them how and where to inject Botox.

They’re not going to advertise that fact, of course, which can muddy the waters when you’re deciding where to seek treatment. There is, however, a very simple way to see past many of those pretenders—and spare yourself from a disappointing result: Seek out a plastic surgeon. Here are a few reasons why.

Years vs. days
In contrast to the weekend training, a plastic surgeon completes a residency specifically for plastic and reconstructive surgery and is required to be board-certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery before beginning to practice.

Why should that matter for a relatively low-risk procedure like a Botox treatment? Because the plastic surgeon spends years studying and working with the anatomy of the human face, becoming, in the process, an expert in aging and appearance. Through that expertise, the plastic surgeon can help you tailor goals to your particular facial anatomy and then formulate a treatment plan to achieve them. The result is a more natural look.

Someone with less knowledge of the aging process and the anatomy is more likely to administer a one-size-fits-all treatment that will yield more artificial-looking results.

A plastic surgeon is also going to take a more holistic approach to your treatment by evaluating your full medical history beforehand. In asking about any medications or supplements you may be taking, allergies you may have, existing medical conditions, and your cosmetic surgery history, the plastic surgeon’s going to be able to determine if you’re a candidate for Botox and what other treatments may be viable options.

It’s another step toward ensuring the desired outcome while minimizing the risk as much as possible.

Long-term planning
At a medical spa and even a dermatologist’s office, often, Botox is part of a very limited menu of cosmetic injection treatments. A plastic surgeon, on the other hand, offers the full breadth of surgical and minimally-invasive cosmetic procedures, which makes them the only ones capable of making an objective recommendation for a treatment, Botox or otherwise.

The other side of that is, there will eventually come a time for everyone when Botox injections are no longer enough. Continuing to rely on them beyond that point creates an artificial look that may be easy to spot when you see it, but it can be much more difficult to recognize on your own face.

A plastic surgeon’s treatment plan will take that inevitability into account and begin laying the foundation for the next stages of enhancing your natural beauty.

The match
Focusing on plastic surgeons leaves you with a much more qualified pool of options, but you still need to find the doctor who’s right for you. The next step is to be meticulous in your search.

Not every plastic surgeon does Botox treatments regularly, so limit the parameters of your search a little further to those who consistently perform them. And then schedule a consultation with a few of the most promising prospects to see who you have a rapport with. Remember, this may be a low-risk, short-term treatment, but, ideally, you want it performed by a plastic surgeon who has your long-term goals in mind.