Cosmetic Surgery Today

Cosmetic Surgery Today

Cosmetic surgery used to mean basically one thing: the face lift. This is a surgical procedure that removes excess facial skin, eliminating signs of aging like sagging skin and jowls. A face lift is a fairly major surgical procedure, but nowadays there are many other less invasive techniques to help sagging skin, and there are procedures to relax wrinkles and fill in lines in the face. Used in a timely manner, these procedures can eliminate the need for a full face lift.

Other anti-aging procedures include minimally invasive techniques like the injection of Botox to relax wrinkles or the injection of soft tissue fillers to plump up lines in the face. There are also surgeries that are less invasive than a face lift but more involved than fillers and Botox, such as brow lifts.

Some facial cosmetic surgery procedures don’t have to do with aging. Sometimes people are unhappy with the shape or size of their nose and have a procedure called rhinoplasty to change it. And some people have protruding ears “pinned” back so that they do not stand out as much.

Cosmetic surgery is available for many other parts of the body besides the face. A procedure called liposuction is used to vacuum excess fat from areas where it accumulates, such as the hips and thighs. Sometimes excess fat is removed from the lower abdominal area, and then excess abdominal skin is trimmed in a procedure commonly known as a "tummy tuck".  

There are also several cosmetic procedures that can be done on the breasts. A breast lift involves removing excess skin to relocate the breasts higher up and minimize sagging. Breast augmentation is an operation in which an implant filled with either silicone gel or saline is inserted above or below the chest muscles underlying the breasts to make them bigger. This is one of the most common cosmetic procedures of all.