Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Articles

Breast augmentation and liposuction were the top two cosmetic surgical procedures performed last year, just as they were in 2018 and for several years prior to that. For all that consistency, plastic surgery is also a field that’s constantly evolving. There’s the innovation, which is occurring at a breakneck speed, spurring new products and treatments and honing existing techniques. There’s also the ever-shifting interests of our patients. 

These days, trends catch fire in a matter of hours, not days, and plastic surgery is no exception. Women and men are entering consultations with their plastic surgeons informed and with very specific ideas about what they want. These are a couple of the most popular requests from recent weeks.

Skin tightening

The proliferation of Zoom calls has been a wake-up call for many of us. Blame it on the bad lighting or the unflattering camera angle. But even with those allowances, we’re spending more time than we ever have before staring at our imperfections. The most common complaint to emerge: sagging skin.

Plastic surgeons are responding with a combination of treatments, entirely under local anesthesia, that address multiple layers of aging. Most commonly, the combination includes AccuTite of the brow, eyes, nasolabial folds, jowls, and chin, which tightens the deeper facial tissue; along with Morpheus8, to tighten the superficial tissue of the whole face; and then ActiveFX of the eyes, face, and neck, to address tone, texture, pigmentation, pore reduction, and fine lines.

It’s a powerful treatment that tightens and lifts, particularly around the eyes and middle of the face.

Hip augmentation

Three years removed from Kylie Jenner’s hourglass figure transformation and it still resonates with women of all ages who feel like they’re lacking feminine hip curves, as well as transfeminine people whose hips remain straight in spite of the estrogen they’re taking. Hip augmentation, in a growing number of instances, is proving to be the solution.

There are two options. With a fat transfer, the plastic surgeon extracts fat from another part of the body through liposuction. The fat is then injected into the hip area. Hip implants, however, are considered the more effective treatment. The implants are made of a semi-solid silicone that’s crafted to look and feel similar to natural muscle tissue. The relatively small implants are inserted through small incisions in the underwear line and positioned under the skin, fat, and tough fascia layers.

The effects of a fat-transfer hip augmentation generally last about four months, while the implants are permanent.

If you want to discuss your options and how the Davis Cosmetic Plastic Surgery team can help, please feel free to contact us to schedule your virtual consult.

When I ask a prospective patient what she wants to get out of her breast augmentation, she may tell me she wants larger breasts or perkier breasts. It’s a modest goal because she may believe that the success of her procedure comes down to the size and shape of her implant, when in reality, there are lots of different approaches that I can use to truly customize her results.

Similarly, prospective patients often arrive in my office distraught over their abdomens (or the chronic back pain that may stem from their weakened core muscles), yet hoping for only a small improvement. Their lack of mobility and the unflattering image they see in their reflection have taken over their lives, and they just want to get back to a state that feels closer to normal for them, never considering that I could do much better than that.

As a plastic surgeon, I appreciate the body as a collection of intricate networks. In other words, where a patient may be focused on a particular area she’s deemed to be a problem, my eye takes in a broader sample. If, for example, I was to remove a bit of fat from a patient’s abdomen, as she’s asked me to do, what effect will that have on the skin around her midsection? Even a slight adjustment will have a ripple effect. So I try to think several steps ahead, always focused on the patient’s goals, but also conscious of a host of other issues they’re probably not aware of that could affect the result.

More than meets the eye

The abdomen is a prime example. My patients are usually most self-conscious about any fat they may have accumulated in the area, often as a result of a pregnancy (or pregnancies). And there is certainly no shortage of techniques or technologies to address that. But that alone is not going to produce the result she wants because the skin around her abdomen may also have weakened—stretch marks are a telltale sign—which means it’ll likely sag once the fat’s removed.

And her biggest issue may be the one she can’t see and might not even be aware of, which is the abdominal muscle separation that occurs nearly universally with pregnancy. The front of the core is left weak, as a result, and the back winds up overcompensating. By realigning those abdominal muscles and suturing them together corset-style, strength and stability return to the abdomen and pelvic region.

You shape the treatment

While each issue is interconnected, that doesn’t mean everything needs to be addressed at once. Here, I’ll defer to my patient. If she’s most concerned about removing the fat, there are a number of ways I can about that, from liposuction to a number of minimally-invasive methods, including CoolSculpting, which freezes pockets of fat, and Kybella injections, which dissolves them instantly.

There are as many options available for skin-tightening and minimizing the appearance of stretch marks, including non-invasive radiofrequency devices.

Let us make sure the treatment is tailored to your specific needs, goals, and schedule. If you’ve been busy outlining all the reasons why you can’t come in to meet with me—it’s time to put them to rest and find out what’s possible.

Contact Davis Plastic Surgery in Cherry Hill with any questions or to schedule a virtual consultation. We look forward to hearing from you.