Cosmetic Surgery With Other Treatments:An Article:

Not long ago, a new patient walked into office with brown splotches, wrinkles, and a tired sagging face.I know I look terrible said Anne, age fifty eight and she proceeded to ask what creams,lasers and injectables I had on hand to help her.I was honest with her:although I could certainly refine her skin quality with the tools I had in office,I wondered aloud whether she had ever considered a face lift, the only procedure that would significantly tighten her sagging skin. We can help you to select a highly skilled plastic surgeon,I said,telling her about a face lift surgeon with whom we work. “Several months later,once you have recovered,we can smooth out your skin and even out the color with laser resurfacing.”At first glance, it might seem as though dermatologists and plastic surgeons are on opposing teams.One side traditionally advocates gradual,minimally invasive approaches,whereas the other side prefers the more dramatic results that come froma few swift incisions with a scalpel.However, any good doctor knows that no one approach is right for everyone, in fact, a combination approach is often just the right tactic for rejuvenating mature skin most completely and most naturally.This tandem of treatments can be done in any order you wish, as long as you space them apart by several months. If you’re still on the fence about which, if any, cosmetic surgery procedures you want or if you don’t have quite the amount of sagging and sun damage that Anne had you might decide to start with some treatments that seem a little less daunting.Perhaps you’ll begin by cleaning up your skin with a program of good topical skin care. Maybe you’ll book a series of intense pulsed light or Fraxel laser treatments to gently even out your complexion’s color and tone, or you might want to schedule a nonsurgical skin-tightening procedure such as Thermage to tighten areas that have begun to sag. If you’re not fully satisfied with those results, you might then move on to a face lift, knowing that your skin will look radiant, smooth, and firm once it is done.

Let’s say you’re sure that you want eyelid surgery, but you also want to smooth away the crinkles and brown spots that are muddling up the area. You can start with an eyelid lift, but since blepharoplasty will do little if anything for superficial skin quality (including fine wrinkles and irregular pigmentation) you might later get a referral for a dermatologist who will prescribe the right batch of creams, fillers and possible Botox, pigment lasers, or intense pulsed light to knock years off the skin’s appearance once the surgery is complete. After all at the end of the day, all of us doctors and patients should be on the same team.