The primary key to a young, rested look is your eyes. If you look at your midface (from your brow to the bottom of your nose), your eyes should be less than 50% of your mid face. The next area of concern is around your mouth. Minimizing jowls and thinning lips adds to a youthful appearance.
Few people are truly symmetrical. Surgery that makes you completely symmetrical may make you look "funny." This picture takes the "young" girl from the previous slide, then creates a new image by putting 2 "left" and 2 "right" sides together.
Excess upper eyelid skin can be "lasered" then tucked, removing excess skin and restoring natural fullness.
Lower hollow is "filled" with your own fat. In my experience, "traditional" lower eyelid surgery is rarely needed.
Micro-pulsed ultrasonic liposuction (Micro-pUAL) can result in dramatic skin tightening without the need for more traditional face and neck lift surgery. This patient was treated only with pulsed UAL. Treatment was required only a local anesthetic. If your skin does not tighten enough, additional surgery or resurfacing treatments can be performed.
Although dramatic skin tightening can occur following pUAL, some patients prefer to augment liposuction results with lifting at the same time. The best candidate for this combined surgery is someone who can "pinch" a fair amount of skin at the corner of their jaw. In this patient, micro-pUAL was combined with a limited jaw line lift. Local anesthesia was used.
The "less is more" combination of micro-pUAL liposuction and removal of skin excess works even for those of more advanced age or with dramatic skin and fat excesses. This patient is over 80 years old.
Because the majority of normal breast tissue is fat, pUAL alone can reduce breast size without the longer scars of more traditional breast reduction surgery. Although persistent breast droop is likely, nipple elevation of up to 3" has been observed. Two women have successfully nursed after pUAL breast reduction.
For women, over 4 lbs of breast tissue has been removed thru a single 1 cm incision.
This patient is a teenage boy suffering from gynecomastia, or abnormal male breast development. Prior to pUAL surgery, additional surgery was commonly needed to remove excess skin, leaving visible scars.
Due to the increased skin tightening I have seen following pUAL liposuction, many patients no longer need a tuck procedure.
Age alone does not predict how well your skin will tighten after pUAL liposuction. This patient is over 55 years old. The scars and risks of the more aggressive tummy tuck surgery were not needed to give her the result she desired.
Traditional tummy tuck surgery requires extensive surgery to lift your tummy wall skin and fat from your tummy wall muscle. Fluid collections, called seromas, are fairly common, requiring a drain tube to remove excess fluid.
If you desire more skin tightening than pUAL liposuction alone, then excess skin can be removed during pUAL. Your skin excess is marked before surgery. Without the more extensive surgery, drains are rarely needed. Recovery tends to be easier than following traditional tummy tuck surgery. The clinical results I have seen are comparable to traditional tuck surgery.
This patient lost over 100 pounds before undergoing the modified pUAL/skin removal tummy tuck.
