Month: February 2016

Many of us develop spots on our skin that we do not like. Here at the Plastic Surgery Group of Memphis, we have non-surgical skin care treatments available to remove these blemishes leaving no (or virtually no) trace. Before we talk about treatment though, let’s go over the different types of spots that might appear on your skin. 

Cherry Angiomas

Red spots, called cherry angiomas, are benign, flat or slightly raised growths that appear primarily on the trunk of your body. They may appear alone or in multiples, and cherry angiomas have a tendency to run in families.

Venous Lakes and Spider Veins

Blue spots, called venous lakes, are dilated superficial veins. Spider veins (telangiectasias) are thread-like dilated capillaries or small veins. Facial telangiectasias are often associated with a condition called rosacea.

Freckles

Brown spots, called lentigos, are commonly known as freckles. Freckles run in families and usually increase in number in response to sun exposure.

Skin Care Treatments Available

Our skin care experts here at the Plastic Surgery Group of Memphis can address any of these spots with the Lumenis Intense Pulsed Light (IPL). This device functions similarly to a laser, but has broader applications because it contains multiple wavelengths. It is as if there were multiple lasers in one box. The laser nurse selects the wavelength that targets the color of the spot to be treated by inserting a specific filter into the hand piece.

Schedule a Skin Care Consultation

To schedule a consultation with our laser nurse, Carla Mask, call (901) 756-3838. Remember – spots are for leopards- so shed your spots today!

Disclaimer: This article describes discounted plastic surgery procedures in the southern Venezuelan city of Puerto Ordaz. We are in no way recommending that our readers travel there. Please see our previous blog post, “Medical Tourist Trap,” to learn more about the risks of traveling abroad to receive plastic surgery.

Seeking Plastic Surgery in Puerto Ordaz

The mismanagement of the Venezuelan economy by its socialist government has led to 200% inflation, widespread shortages of consumer goods and medicines, and a black market for the Venezuelan currency, the Bolivar, where a dollar buys 130 times the official exchange rate. Out of this economic darkness has emerged one shining sector: cosmetic plastic surgery. In Puerto Ordaz, the country’s now decrepit former industrial capital located 500 miles from the Brazilian border, lower middle class women from Venezuela’s southern neighbor are finding that their Reals (the Brazilian currency) buy a lot of plastic surgery.

Hundreds of women are making the trek, braving 16 military checkpoints while hiding their hard cash in oversized bras. Once in Puerto Ordaz they undergo breast augmentation, liposuction, and Brazilian butt lifts (referred to in Venezuela as “Boom-Booms”) for the equivalent of a mere $1800 in total. On the way home, their newly augmented breasts fill out their bra cups where they had formerly stashed their cash.

Plastic Surgery Boom in the Local Economy

The popularity of the cross-border plastic surgery has given a boost to the depressed local economy. An engineer in the state-owned steel plant supplements her $40 per month salary with an additional $18 dollars a day providing post-operative care to the Brazilian women. The plastic surgeons offer their patients transportations, nurses, hairdressers, and shopping therapy during the convalescent period. Portuguese speaking staff has been hired as well as security guards since Venezuela has one of the world’s highest crime rates. The Brazilian women are warned not to speak Portuguese in public, wear jewelry, nor openly carry cellphones.

Whereas the Brazilians making the trip to Venezuela where initially housekeepers, kitchen maids, and shop assistants living in rural towns, they are now being followed by their employers from the larger Brazilian city of Manaus. The middle class women are sensing competition from their newly enhanced and reshaped employees. How long the boom in plastic surgery will last is not known as the opposition just gained control of Venezuela’s Congress and promised to reverse the socialist policies that have stifled the country’s economy.

Plastic Surgery in Memphis

We tell intriguing news stories like this one on our blog to provide context for our discussions of the plastic surgery industry. Luckily though, we live in a place where no borders have to be crossed for plastic surgery. If you’re interested in a cosmetic procedure and want to find out if it’s the right one for you, please contact our Memphis plastic surgery team to set up a consultation. We’re just around the corner and only a phone call away!

We all know that we see ourselves a little differently than everyone else does. When we look in a mirror, we are seeing a reversed image. What is left is right and what is right is left. It turns out that people prefer the image they see in the mirror to their true appearance.

Plastic Surgery Patient Study

Researchers in Paris enlisted volunteers from a group of French women aged 36-60 undergoing cosmetic surgery between January and March of 2015. Of these women, 50 were having facial aesthetic surgeries such as face-lifts and blepharoplasties. The plastic surgeons took two digital photographs of each of the women and discarded the second photo. They reversed the first image and showed the patients the two photos (the natural way the woman appears in photographs and the mirror image-the way she sees herself when she looks in the mirror). 

The women in the study were asked to choose which picture of themselves they preferred. The flipped mirror image was chosen by 73% of the subjects. Only 9 patients realized that the second picture was actually mirror image.

Plastic Surgeons Work with Asymmetries

Humans are naturally asymmetric. We all have a big eye and a small eye. If you wear glasses, place them on a table. If the glasses can be rocked, that means one of your ears is higher than the other. Women have one breast that is a little larger than the other. Most people are not even aware that they have these asymmetries. Although plastic surgeons try to make both sides of the body match perfectly, this is an “ideal” that rarely occurs in nature. The French study proves once again that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

Continuing our virtual visit to the Hunterian museum we now come to an exhibit called the “Guinea Pig Club”. Members of the “Club,” which at one point numbered more than 650, were injured Royal Air Force (RAF) personnel.  

A Reconstructive Surgery Pioneer

The “Guinea Pig Club” members were patients of a plastic surgeon who was eventually knighted for his pioneering reconstructive work. Archibald McIndoe gave the wounded fliers a second chance at life. Many of the injuries they suffered were burns that resulted from crashes, and the severity of their injuries necessitated that Dr. McIndoe develop new techniques, hence the moniker “Guinea Pig Club”.

Archibald McIndoe began operating on the wounded RAF personnel in 1941. The reconstructive surgeries were performed at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, Sussex, UK. As the disfigured airmen would need to have multiple surgeries, they stayed on in East Grinstead, which became known as “the town that wouldn’t stare”. 

Not only did the members of the “Guinea Pig Club” share a common bond in their relationship with Dr. McIndoe and his team, but also they became one of the first patient support groups. They would go out drinking between hospitalizations and even married several of their nurses. By 2007 the “Club” whose membership had dwindled as age took its toll, met for the final time. This meeting presented the opportunity to photograph the men who still bore the scars from their injuries and record recollections of their experiences and camaraderie.

Winnie the Pooh at the Hunterian Museum

Finally we come to a skull of a bear. Winnie the Pooh was a real live bear whose owner, a Canadian soldier, Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, brought him to the United Kingdom when he was stationed there during World War I. He had purchased the orphan bear in his hometown of Winnipeg, hence the name Winnie. 

When Colebourn deployed to France he donated Winnie to the London Zoo, where the bear lived for 20 years. Winnie was visited there in 1925 by author A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin. The boy was so delighted by the bear that he renamed his stuffed teddy bear, Winnie the Pooh. A beloved children’s story was born. Milne did take some artistic license, as Winnie of the Zoo was a black bear, not golden brown.

When Winnie died, the London Zoo donated his body to that repository of human and animal curiosities – The Hunterian Museum.