Modern plastic surgery is increasingly moving from correcting age-related changes to their prevention. What operations should be considered before the situation worsened, says Dmitry Saratovtsev, Ph.D., plastic surgeon at the center of plastic surgery “CM-Plastika”.
Transconjunctival blepharoplasty
What the people call nothing other than bags under the eyes, in fact, is a fatty hernia in the lower eyelid area. If the bags appeared after 25 and later did not go away on their own, then after 30 the hope that the problem will go away on its own tends to zero.
Transconjunctival blepharoplasty helps prevent the problem from worsening when the situation is not too advanced: there is no excess skin and excessive sagging in the early stages. If you take care of the issue of bags after 40, then you will have to do full-scale plastic surgery with the removal of excess skin, and this is longer, more expensive, and the healing process will be much longer. At a young age, it is possible to perform a minimally invasive operation without incisions and stitches: in fact, fat in the eyelid zone is simply removed through a small puncture.
Liposuction
Most often, women remove fat deposits from the abdomen, buttocks and thighs (for example, breeches). Many women (34%) undergo this procedure between the ages of 30 and 40 – they want to restore their beauty after childbirth. The procedure is best done during this period, because after 40 the skin becomes not so firm and elastic, after liposuction it can sag.
During the operation, the surgeon removes subcutaneous fat using vacuum suction or a more modern method such as laser lipolysis. This method helps to remove fat not only on the belly or buttocks, but also in delicate areas such as the cheeks, chin or neck area.
This operation has a number of contraindications: varicose veins, thrombophlebitis, severe diseases of the blood coagulation system, liver and kidneys, oncology. With stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases, as in the case of blepharoplasty, surgery can be performed, but only if the attending physician allows it.
Lipofilling
If the prospect of using artificial fillers to fill in the emerging wrinkles does not appeal to you, there is one minimally invasive surgery with a similar but more natural result – lipofilling. During the operation, the surgeon removes a small amount of fatty tissue rich in stem cells from the areas of excess deposition – from the buttocks, sides or abdomen. The resulting mass undergoes special filtration, then it is used to fill wrinkles (most often these are nasolabial folds), as well as to increase the volume of the lips and cheekbones.
Lipofilling gives a visually more natural result than botox. The result lasts quite a long time: the fat cells become overgrown with blood vessels and take root well, and the stem cells in the adipose tissue help to make the corrected zone more elastic and taut.
“There may be contraindications to plastic surgery, for example, pregnancy, cancer, diseases of the cardiovascular system,” said Dmitry Saratovtsev.