Plastic Surgery Cosmetic Surgery

Plastic surgeons use facial implants to improve and enhance facial contours. Frequently, these implants will help provide a more harmonious balance to your face and features so that you feel better about the way you look.
There are many implants available, manufactured from a variety of materials. They may help strengthen a jawline or bring the chin or cheekbones into balance with the rest of the face.
This brochure describes some of the facial implants currently available as well as the techniques for their use. It will familiarize you with these procedures but cannot provide all the details which may be relevant to your particular needs.
If you feel that one or more of the procedures described in this brochure may be of benefit, be sure to ask your plastic surgeon for more information.

Technique
The procedure follows a similar pattern for all facial areas. The surgeon makes a small incision near where the implant will be placed, either in a crease or inside the mouth at the gum/lip junction. Then a pocket is made in the facial tissue, the implant inserted, and the incision is stitched. The process generally takes 1-2 hours, usually with general anesthesia. The incision is bandaged or taped, and stitches are removed in 5-10 days (sutures placed inside the mouth will dissolve in a similar period of time). Sometimes facial implants are inserted at the same time as a facelift, nose or eyelid procedure is performed.

Am I A Candidate For a Face Implant?
You are a candidate for this procedure if you are in good physical and mental health. You should not expect perfection. Facial implants will not make you look like someone else. However, they will enhance your current features.

How Do I Know If a Face Implant is Right For Me?
When you sit down with your surgeon for your pre-operative consultation, he or she will ask detailed questions about your medical history. Among the things the surgeon will need to know is if you have had either cosmetic or reconstructive facial surgery before.
Additionally, he or she will want to know what you seek to change about your appearance and why you are unhappy with your features. Are there other surgeries you want or need to have done, such as a facelift, forehead lift, or other cosmetic procedure?
If you have dental problems, you will need to let your surgeon know about these.

How Are Facial Implants Done?
During your pre-operative consultation, you and your surgeon will decide together whether you’ll have local anesthesia with an oral sedative to help you relax or general anesthesia (which means you’ll be put to sleep).
In most cases, facial implant surgery is completed on an outpatient basis in a hospital, your surgeon’s office or a surgical center. Your surgeon will make this determination based on your particular case.
The length of surgery will depend on which part of your face is affected, but it commonly lasts between one to two hours.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Implants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.