Aesthetic Facial Plastic Surgery Blog- Seattle/Bellevue facelift/rhinoplasty surgeon- Dr. Philip Young » Facial Implants

The YoungVolumizer can be a substitute for many traditional procedures like a face lift, mid face lift / cheek lift, lip augmentation, eye lift, etc

dryoung — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:47:02 +0000

Why is that? Well a big part of the aging process is a volume loss and if you had a way to replace the volume in the face, doing so in special areas can make you look incredibly younger. It is our secret on how to do this. But there are ways to volumize the eyes, forehead, temple, lower eyes, cheeks and mouth area to substitute and replace face lifts, mid face lifts / cheek lifts, upper eyelifts, lower eyelifts, cheek implants, jaw implants, chin implants, brow lifts, temple lifts, etc with the YoungVolumizer. That is why we call the YoungVolumizer, the Breakthrough Incision Less Face Lift. The idea of cutting away tissue is becoming an older idea. Cutting away changes the face. The only situation that cutting away tissue can come into play is if your face changed dramatically since when you were younger. Aging is like a grape changing into a raisin. Traditional procedures tended to make that raisin into a smaller raisin. This action and process would make the raisin contorted. Because now you are trying to shape the raisin into a smaller volume. Some of the skin of the raisin will just not conform to the smaller volume you now have because you lost it from the transformation from a grape to a raisin. Replacing this volume will play a huge part in making the raisin back into the grape again. See this introduction video to the YoungVolumizer.

Thanks for reading,

Dr Young

#plasticsurgery #facelift #plasticsurgeon #medispa #skincare

volume changes in aging is taking more prominence in our thinking about facial aging

dryoung — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 14:40:53 +0000

This is a new report which I thought was interesting. It discusses more of the idea that volume is the likely playing more of role in facial aging and not drooping. This is more evidence that the future of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery and facial rejuvenation surgery lies in volume replacement instead of tissue reduction / excision. Here is an interesting article in Plastic Surgery News on this subject.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

Plastic Surgery Face lift Alternative, Older Philosophies, and Newer Alternatives

dryoung — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:05:23 +0000

Plastic Surgery in the past has concentrated on the philosophy of reductive surgery. In the past, Plastic Surgeons typically approached facial plastic and reconstructive surgery by reducing and excising away tissue. The results often lead to a tighter and unwanted look. These results have made people who have received plastic surgery in the past look like they had something done. The question is why that occurs.

As you age, the process is really dominated by a volume loss in your face (And your whole body for that matter). You lose volume all throughout the face. But what it appears to others though is that your face is dropping or sagging. How does this occur? Well, as you lose volume, the skin and tissues are no longer pushed forward away from the facial skeleton. Without this volume support the tissue, the only way for the tissues to move is down and inferiorly, therefore the sagging. So, in the past, plastic surgeons would see this drooping and would try to correct by lifting and cutting away tissue. This is also compounded by the fact that plastic surgeons were surgeons. What we mean is tht surgeons have been trained all of these years on the art of cutting and surgical procedures. Naturally over time, they had a predisposition to cutting things away. This is the genesis of the reduction philosophy in plastic surgery.

Why is this approach unatural? There is an easier way to answer this question and we have a great analogy. Your aging is analogous to a grape and it’s change to a raisin over time. This process of change entails a lot of volume changes. The grape is the volumized version of the raisin. Plastic surgery has traditionally approached facial rejuvenation by making this raisin into a smaller more pulled raisin. They made incisions in the raisin’s wrinkles (from being dried up) and then excised the skin of the grape to make things tighter. As you can start to see, the raisin that has gone through this approach can never really look like the grape it once was without some type of addition to the volume of the raisin.

We are advancing in our understanding of facial rejuvenation and the above ideas are central to this change in thought. Volumizing is playing a major role in this improvement of our approaches. It began with fillers in the 1990′s and possibly earlier. The nasolabial folds were the first areas to be volumized in this spirit. Collagen started the trend where restylane now dominates. This technique then began to be applied to other areas of the face such as the marionette lines (lines inferior to the corner of the mouth), lower eyelid hollows and bags, and the rest of the face. Because of the temporary results that were achieved from restylane (6 months to a year at best), other options began to surface and resurface. Long acting injectable fillers include radiesse (a natural bone product made up of calcium hydroxyapatite), artefill (methylmethacrylate microspheres), sculptra (poly-L lactic acid). Most of the results obtained by the longer acting fillers were like restylane but had the potential to last much longer. What has been found through experience, though, is that the longer acting injectables eventually do lose volume over the course of a year but the actual materials can persist for longer. How do we make sense of this? Part of the reason why is due to the carrier molecule that becomes absorbed (glycerin, carboxy methocellulose, etc). With this absorption, the results also wane. Silicone has been used as injectable filler, but the results are variable from good to disastrous.

As I mentioned, other options began to resurface with this new interest in volumizing. This new idea for more natural results, fat injections began to make a comeback. The process includes harvesting fat from another part of your body (abodomen most commonly but also hips, waist, side of the legs) and then it is refined and injected into various parts of the face. The results from fat grafting in the face can be amazing. The main issue with fat grafting is finding the most optimal technique to achieve the most reliable fat survival results. Consistency has been a major challenge for plastic surgeons. There are many steps that are taken with fat grafting that can play a role on the fat’s survival. It has been difficult to study every aspect of this process. But research is continuing. The plastic surgery community is doing all that it can to find the best alternatives including fat grafting and volumizing the face. In terms of fat grafting, there are many ways to approach this complicated endeavour. Just as many different artists will draw a face in an infinite amount of varying ways, so too can a plastic surgeon volumize a face in a those infinitesimal ways . The Young Volumizer is an amazing approach to volumizing the face.

Other alternatives to volumizing the face is the use of facial implants. Facial implants are most commonly placed in the chin, and cheeks. Implants for the rest of the face have been used but with less frequency. Implants, however, require a significant surgical procedure to place them in the face which many people are not excited about. This is one of the reasons that fat grafting has taken such a big part of the stage in natural facial rejuvenation through volumizing.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

I had a sliding genioplasty 5 days ago and I look acromegalic or cave manish

dryoung — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:17:45 +0000

This is a question that I answered for a patient that had a surgery done a while ago by another surgeon:

5 days is too early to judge your results after genioplasty. Right now you are going to have a tremendous amount of swelling. You have to wait at least a week and up to a month for it to really look good. Generally, I tell people that you will have 60% of your healing at 6 weeks, 80% at 6 months and the rest occurs up to 2 years later. So be patient. It will get better and most of the time things can be changed back to the way they were or altered a bit. I personally prefer chin augmentation to genioplasty. Chin augmentation is generally, through many studies, associated with less complications than genioplasty. These complications can include, nerve damage, a step off deformity, bone loss, problems with the implants or titanium plates and screws used for the fixation of the chin implant or the genioplasty segment that is advanced.

Cheers!, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

Chin Implant Revision for misplacement and for aesthetic reasons (when the implant is too large)

dryoung — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:50:37 +0000

There are many times when I get people that come to my office wondering about changing the appearance of a chin implant that they had before. I have this case of a woman who had a chin implant by another surgeon and she felt that the chin implant was riding too high. She felt that the chin implant was also too large and it made her look a little masculine. When it comes to revisions, you should not ever just take an implant out unless it is a really small implant. What happens is that the soft tissue can ball up and contract and create an unfavorable appearance. What is typically the better thing to do is to replace the large implant with a smaller one. If the implant is already smaller, then you could make a case to not put any implant in and this is an option only for a small implant. Generally small implants are the ones that people have an issue with. Also when you put an implant in, they implant should alwaws ride on the inferior border of the mandible where the bone is hard and less likely to undergo resorption. I prefer medpor implants for many reasons. They can get incorporated and vascularized to act like your own tissue much more so than silicone implants. Silicone implants tend to have a capsule form around it and will not get incorporated. Hence, when you hit your silicone implant there is more likely the chance for complications years after the procedure as opposed to medpor where once it gets incoporated past 12 weeks, it will be more resistant to infection and rejection. Here is a video showing and demonstrating what we are talking about.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

What is a good option for something in place of Sculptra? What are the alternatives?

dryoung — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:39:01 +0000

Fat injections are the best option as an alternative to Sculptra injections. I even consider fat injections first before Sculptra. Nothing is better than using your own tissues for plastic surgery purposes. You have essentially no risk for reactions, no risk for cancer, no toxicity from your own tissues. Sculptra is made up of suture material. It is a foreign substance that is essentially broken down into carbon dioxide and glucose and ultimately carbon dioxide and water. Other ways of filling is through silicone implants. The problem areas for implants and Sculptra is the periorbital area. Implants are also hard to use for the buccal area where there is no bone for the implant to rest on. It is here that Sculptra can be used and Fat injections.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

Can you Fat Graft / Transfer Around a Facial Implant? Can you Fat Graft / Transfer / Inject into the area if you remove the Implant?

dryoung — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:44:57 +0000

You can graft around an implant but it depends on the blood supply around the implant. Typically, around the implant a layer of scar tissue usually forms. Scar tissue is notoriously known for its low blood supply. Bringing fat next to the implant has the potential to live if done right. Over time with the survival of fat around the implant, additional fat grafting (or Fat transfer / Fat Injections / Fat Transplants / Fat augmentation / Fat enhancements) can be done there to further increase the volume around the implant. If you remove the implant, the success of fat grafting can be attained but within the scar tissue, the fat has a more difficult time to survive. This may mean that you will need to do more touch ups to the area. Fat grafting can lead to long term results. It is all about the technique. In my practice, fat does survive and sometimes near 90% of the fat can survive. This is true, so much so, that I need to be careful not to put too much fat in to certain areas. It is easier to put more fat into the area than to take it out. Here are some results of fat grafting:

Hope that helps!

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

Before Fat Grafting / Transfer / Injections to the Forehead, Temple, Upper / Lower Eyes, Cheeks, Nasolabial Folds, Marionette Lines, and Mouth Area

After Fat Grafting / Transfer / Injections to the Forehead, Temple, Upper / Lower Eyes, Cheeks, Nasolabial Folds, Marionette Lines, and Mouth Area

What percentage of body fat do you need to be a candidate for fat grafting?

dryoung — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:16:38 +0000

Studies looking into the percentage of body fat are not prevalent in the literature. So this hasn’t been determined accurately. Because you work out regularly and have low body fat, you might not be the best candidate for a lot of fat grafting (fat injections, fat transfer, fat filler, fat injectible). I would reserve fat grafting for areas that are least likely to tolerate more permanent fillers or implants. These areas would be around the eyes and in the cheek hollow area. The alternative for the areas other than that are sculptra, silicone implants for a more semi permanent or permanent options. Temporary fillers can be used everywhere essentially. Temple hollows, forehead volume loss, jaw shrinkage and sunken cheeks can be augmented with silicone implants as an option in the very thin or fit patient. Fat can then be used in the areas that cannot tolerate these implants.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

Can radiesse / radiance be used in the Jawline and lateral portion of the Jaw area?

dryoung — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:48:47 +0000

Radiesse can work but you may need a bit more in this area. Radiesse is made of calcium hydroxyapatite, the same constituent as your own bone. This makes it really compatible with our bodies. For Mandibular augmentation, you will likely need a siginificant more amount of augmentation here than you would along the mouth lines. Mandibular silicone implants are made up of approximately 10-15cc each side. So you will need quite alot of radiesse to show the same amount of change. This is important to know before doing radiesse injections in this area. If you just want to get a little taste of what this will look like then radiesse would be a good trial. Silicone implants are one of the better ways of really augmenting the lateral jaw bone.

Thanks for reading!

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

How can jaw implants make me look and how can anticipate what you will look like from a jaw implant?

dryoung — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:16:19 +0000

Computer imaging can help you understand what jaw implants can look like. Jaw implants (jaw enhancement / jaw plastic surgery / jaw cosmetic surgery / jaw silicone implants / jaw augmentation) can enhance your face and give you the volume that can make you look alot better. For men, it can masculinize your appearance and give a stronger and moe masculine look. For Women, it can beautify your face. Take a look at some female models and you will notice how some women look very beautiful with very strong jawlines without looking masculine.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington