Now is also the time to be thinking about your lips to prevent chapping and cracking in the winter months. Wax balms such as ChapStick® can prevent dry lips and cracking by retaining moisture in the lips, but cannot soften lips once they are dry and cracked in the middle of winter. A lip therapy product is then needed, one that can both hydrate and protect the lips.

Be careful of harsh soaps that can strip essential oils from you skin. Your skin needs every ounce of moisture it can muster in the colder months. Finally, just because the weather has cooled off does not mean that you can forget about protection from the sun. Ultraviolet radiation can pass through clouds on cool fall days, so sunscreens are just as important as in the summer months. You’re protecting against both premature aging of the skin as well as skin cancer.

In recently released statistics from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, nearly 12 million cosmetic surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed in the United States last year. For men and women combined, liposuction came in at number one, with over 450,000 procedures performed. For women alone, the top procedure was breast augmentation, chosen by nearly 400,000 women alone. Rounding out the top five in women were eyelid surgery, tummy tucks and breast reduction surgery. Among nonsurgical procedures, Botox injections to smooth out wrinkles and hyaluronic acid injections to correct lines and folds were numbers one and two, with over 4.3 million procedures performed.

These national trends are exactly in line with what we see at Lawrenceville Plastic Surgery. The general area of body contouring, with includes breast surgery, liposuction and tummy tucks, has long been the major concern of patients coming in for a consultation. It is possibly because of our proximity to many beaches that the first thoughts of putting on a bathing suit gets many women thinking about a body contouring procedure.

The other general area involves facial rejuvenation surgery including facelifts and eyelid surgery. Many of these procedures can now be put off for a few years because of the excellent results from nonsurgical injections of Botox® and Juvederm™ for wrinkles and folds. These injection treatments can be complemented by resurfacing of the face by lasers or microdermabrasion.

Lawrenceville Plastic Surgery is now using the ON-Q® pain pump in a number of surgical procedures to reduce postoperative pain and narcotic requirements.  ON-Q® is a small, high-tech balloon that is inserted at the time of surgery.  It holds local anesthetic which is delivered via a tiny tube directly to the surgical site for up to five days after surgery.  The surgical site becomes numb, and because the medication is directed only into the area where you have pain, the rest of your body stays in a comfortable, normal state.

ON-Q® is very suited for an abdominoplasty or tummy tuck.  Much of the postoperative discomfort from an abdominoplasty is from the tightening of the rectus (sit-up) muscles.  Numbing up of these muscles get patients up and around sooner, reducing the chance of postoperative complications such as clots in the legs or pulmonary emboli.

Narcotic requirements are reduced, along with the narcotic side effects of nausea, drowsiness, grogginess and constipation.

Ask about the ON-Q® during your consultation with Dr. Smotrich. You’ll feel better faster.

Dermal fillers, in addition to Botox®, have become the mainstay of nonsurgical treatment of facial lines and folds. The traditional fillers temporarily replace lost volume with some material, while the newer fillers can stimulate collagen and tissue growth and provide a much longer lasting correction of lost volume. There are over a dozen fillers currently approved by the FDA, each with its own benefits and risks. All of the most popular fillers in the United States are available at Lawrenceville Plastic Surgery.

It has been 26 years since the FDA approved bovine collagen as the first injectable filling agent, and it was long considered the gold standard for replacing the body’s depleted collagen and adding volume to facial folds and lines. It required a skin test and lasted up to six months, but research was ongoing to find a substance that was not animal-derived.

That substance turned out to be hyaluronic acid, marketed under the names Restylane® and Juvederm™. Hyaluronic acid is a naturally- occurring sugar in the body, and it is produced commercially by harmless bacteria. We have found that it lasts longer than collagen, and because it is clear, it can be injected closer to the surface of the skin to better plump out lines and folds. The most common areas treated are the nasolabial folds, the corners of the mouth, and the lines extending down from the corners of the mouth along the sides of the chin, better known as the marionette lines. The newest hyaluronic acid filler is Prevelle Silk™, which is the first HA filler to contain lidocaine to make the injections more comfortable.

One of the newest fillers is Sculptra®, a poly-l-lactic acid filler.  Sculptra® can be injected in larger volumes to correct chin and cheek volume loss, because it stimulates the production of collagen. It can also increase the thickness of skin.  The results are gradual, taking up to six weeks to develop, but can last up to two years.

Lawrenceville Plastic Surgery can also offer ArteFill®, the first permanent injectable filler approved by the FDA for the correction of nasolabial folds. With a new patient, we will generally start with a temporary filler such as Juvederm to see what type of correction of a fold we can achieve before using a permanent substance like ArteFill®. It is important to see how well a fold can be corrected before performing a treatment that cannot be reversed.

The choices of a dermal filler are indeed numerous, but that is the reason for your detailed consultation with Dr. Smotrich at Lawrenceville Plastic Surgery.