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Cosmetic surgery I forget who it was who first said that, " you can never be too rich or too thin!". But it's a maxim that has rung in our ears for the better part of fifty years. Places like gyms are full of people seeking the elusive promise of the body beautiful.
In Touch talks to Dr Richard Stott about the dramatic results with liposuction: "It is normally said that liposuction is for people with relatively normal weight to improve their shape and it is hugely successful, you can go up to 3 to 3 and a half litres of fat pretty safely. If you think that it is sachets of milk removed from chosen areas, it makes a very big difference to shape".
Dr Stott continues: "Often you'll find that a man has got quite a good reason for the operation, he might have a much younger spouse, or he looks rather old for his age, or he's got terrible bags under his eyes and everybody thinks he is looking rather tired. They're usually pretty definite, they come in and say "this is my problem, can you fix it? How much? When? Will it work?" And after that they are no nonsense patients on the whole." The calf operation makes a lot of sense for both men and women who spend hours exercising, trying to build shapely calves. It's a notoriously difficult part of the body to develop, and the results of the operation are spectacular. The procedure is quite simple: a pocket is created inside the calf muscle, and a silicone prosthesis is introduced. The incision is small, and the scars are almost invisible within months.
"That was the course of much controversy In America as to whether they actually result in a human disease. There is now a huge body of evidence that no human disease was caused by the presence of silicone per se in the body, and silicone is used widely in other applications of the body - in finger joints, in heart valves and cerebral shunts in children and all sorts of things like that," comments Dr Stott. We saw how a silicone prosthesis is used in calf enlargement, but its most widely publicised use is in breast augmentation surgery.
Tina Scharnik, who had a breast augmentation, says the following: "I had a breast implant done in 1985. I have never had a problem, I breastfed my babies - for people who want to breastfeed their babies. I have never had a problem since." Of course you can go to gym for hours every day, but no amount of exercise will stop the march of time across your face. "I think the skin resurfacing laser has absolutely changed the face of cosmetic surgery. It is truly remarkable what one can do for a sun damaged and middle aged skin that has gone beyond conventional techniques," says Dr Stott. "I think that there are going to be vast technological strides. We are on the model T4 of skin resurfacing lasers at the moment, there will be new and improved wave lengths, better ways of delivering the power, better ways of managing the raw skin afterwards".
A word of caution from Dr Stott: "I would like to urge viewers to be particularly cautious of allowing plastic surgeons, or other non plastic surgeons, who are doing plastic surgery in a number of clinics, from implanting foreign substances. Foreign substances near the surface of the skin usually cause trouble in the end and I would strongly urge viewers to have a second opinion from another plastic surgeon before allowing people to do that sort of thing."
Contacts
Dr Richard Stott
Dr Saul Braun
Tina Scharnik |
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Contents and images © 1998 All rights reserved |
But what if that body beautiful remains elusive? Or what if the flaws you perceive in yourself can't be corrected by any amount of exercise and diet? Where do you go then? Modern techniques in plastic surgery can make an enormous difference in the way you look, and advances in technique make the procedures less invasive and easier to recover from.
A common misconception is that the vast majority of patients who opt for cosmetic surgery are women. It seems that approximately 10 to 20% of cosmetic surgery patients are men, and the need is growing. Surgery among men is on the up and up, with many of them opting for this very popular operation, Calf Enhancement.
We've all heard the scare stories about silicone. It's currently banned in the US, and is constantly under investigation. However, many South African plastic surgeons come out strongly in support of its use.
Says Dr Stott: "In the old days a simple thin walled silicone implant used to be placed directly behind the breast, between the breast and the muscle, and as many viewers will know, a lot of these eventually went quite hard and that at least is where our present scientific knowledge stands. Prosthesis in the mean time has greatly improved, they are now much thicker walled and don't loose silicone . They are now placed universally behind the muscle. That has made the operation much more reliable and the incidence of the breast going hard is extremely low."
Modern techniques mean that the results of cosmetic surgery may well be dramatic, but bear in mind that certain techniques are riskier than others.
So you've seen the gory details and you're still considering it? We could offer you lots of platitudes about beauty being skin-deep, and how what really matters is on the inside, but if you've made the choice to have cosmetic surgery, you're unlikely to have made it lightly. Choose your surgeon carefully, shop around and know what you're asking for. Good luck.