You’re Invited

Spring Open House
On Saturday, March 31, 2012
From: 10am – 3pm

We at Dr. Kara Plastic Surgery are excited for this upcoming event. Join us for a day of fun and excitement along with awesome promotions. We are looking forward to spending the day with our wonderful existing clients and meeting new clients.

There will be live demonstrations throughout the day providing knowledge and experience of various new treatments and procedures offered in our clinic.  Doctors, Nurses, Medical Estheticians/Administrator’s and Patient Consultants will be on hand to answer any questions or inquiries. There will be refreshments served.

There will be over $4,000 dollars worth of prizes to be won, discounts on all of our products and 100 gift bags available for the 1^st 100 visitors. So……….don’t be late.

We are eager to see you at the Open House on Saturday March 31^st, 2012.

That’s why, this month, Dr. Kara’s plastic surgery practice in Toronto is featuring a product that is sure to give you fuller, more youthful-looking lips. The secret is JUVÉDERM®.

What is JUVÉDERM?

JUVÉDERM is a dermal filler made from hyaluronic acid, which is a naturally occurring element in skin. When injected by a trained professional, this completely safe and effective treatment won’t create the look of “duck lips” that many women fear. Instead, it will provide natural, full-looking lips that are smooth and supple.

JUVÉDERM can also be used to add volume to other parts of the face, such as sunken under-eye areas or cheek hollows. It also is good for reducing deep facial creases that run from the bottom of the nose to the corners of the mouth, and it is often combined with BOTOX® Cosmetic for more overall rejuvenation.

One  JUVÉDERM treatment in Toronto takes about 45 minutes to an hour, and you can return to your normal daily activities immediately. The results are usually evident for about 1 year, but they can last longer depending on the person. With amazing results, few side effects and very little recovery time, JUVÉDERM is an ideal choice for creating the look you desire.

Give It a Shot!

Dr. Kara Plastic Surgery is one of the most popular cosmetic surgery clinics in the greater Toronto area. If you’re a new client, we look forward to getting to know you and explaining how a few simple injections of JUVÉDERM can refresh your face.  Schedule a consultation today, or call for more information: (800) 390-5611.

If you feel that your perfect swimsuit body has always eluded you because of small breast size, it’s not too late to achieve a better swimsuit body this summer.

If you choose to undergo breast augmentation surgery now, you can be back in the pool this summer. Breast augmentation recovery only takes a few weeks, with minimal scarring that does not show under your swimsuit.

Dr. Kara is one of the only plastic surgeons in Toronto to specialize in the 24-hour breast augmentation. 24-hour breast augmentation surgery uses every possible technique to reduce swelling and tissue damage. This technique allows many women to return to work the day after surgery.

In the video below, Dr. Melinda Haws of Nashville says, “you can be in the beach, in the ocean, in the water in 2-3 weeks [after breast augmentation surgery]. Are you breasts going to look as pretty as they will in 2-3 months? No.” Like many cosmetic surgical procedures, the full results of breast augmentation surgery are seen once all the swelling is gone.

Even if some swelling remains, you will be recovered and healed enough to hit the beach a few weeks after surgery. And with a 24-hour technique, there will be less damage and swelling overall.

Your Best Swimsuit Body

Women of all ages choose to have breast augmentation surgery to increase the size of their breasts, correct an asymmetry, or restore lost volume after breast feeding and weight loss.

While many women choose to undergo breast augmentation surgery in the fall or winter to ensure that they are fully recovered for swimsuit season, the short recovery times means that you can have surgery now and be swimming again by August.

Other popular surgeries that can help you improve your beach body, such as a tummy tuck, have a longer recovery time. You may want to schedule a tummy tuck in the Autumn if you don’t want to lose too much beach time this summer.

Find out more by watching the video below or by scheduling a breast implant consultation today.

It is commonly believed that facelifts and similar surgeries in the elderly carry a greater degree of post-operative risk, as this has often been found to be the case in other areas of medicine. Elderly patients often have slower healing times and extant medical issues that contribute to a higher rate of complications than among younger patients.

However, the Cleveland study, which was recently published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, has shown that the rate of facelift complications among the elderly can be reduced through careful selection of patients.

In other words, while the percentage of elderly people who can pass this threshold may be lower than the percentage of younger patients who would qualify, a 65-year-old patient that passes through the selection process could enter surgery with the knowledge that she is as safe as someone 20 years younger.

The study examined consecutive facelifts in 216 women from 2005 to 2008. Sixty-eight patients were 65 years or older, and 148 patients were under the age of 65. The elderly patients were carefully selected based on their medical histories. After comparing various factors (such as co-morbidities, operative details, and overall health status) with a rigorous statistical analysis, the study found that age was not an independent factor in contributing to post-operative facelift complications.

The key to preventing a higher rate of facelift complications among the elderly appears to be carefully screening patients and excluding those with serious related medical conditions. Further research is needed to see whether there is indeed an upper limit to safe facelift surgery.

The number of cosmetic procedures for American teenagers rose sharply around the turn of the millennium, from roughly 60,000 procedures performed in 1997 to 225,000 in 2003. Last year, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, nearly 219,000 cosmetic plastic surgery procedures were performed on people aged 13-19. It’s likely that similar trends have emerged here in Canada.

While many parents struggle with the idea of giving their children plastic surgery as a graduation gift, many will find reasonable options upon doing a little research. Here are some of the procedures that have proven popular among this age group:

• Laser hair removal
• Rhinoplasty
• Laser skin resurfacing
• Botox

Many teenage girls will seek liposuction or breast augmentation, but responsible plastic surgeons will always carefully consider whether these procedures are medically appropriate for individual patients. This is especially challenging with teenage girls, who may one day wish to have children and might not fully anticipate the changes that their bodies will undergo.

Sometimes it’s better to wait. Plastic surgeon Dr. John Nguyen says he usually advises younger clients to “spend a year in college or work” because “it gives you that additional year of maturity and it gives you an idea of who you are and it gives you just a bit more time to decide what it is that you want to enhance that would make you happier.”

Parents who may wish to pay for their teens’ cosmetic procedures should be sure that they know where to draw the line. Laser treatments have become very popular because many mothers and fathers realize that these are safe and effective ways of removing hair or resurfacing the skin. Other procedures, such as rhinoplasty, should only be pursued if there are medical indications in their favour.

A study in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery revealed this new procedure, in which a bra-like vacuum device gently applies negative pressure on the breast. The device stretches the breast tissue during the several weeks preceding surgery.

When the patient goes into the operation, her breast has been slightly expanded, meaning there is more room in the breast for the transfer of fat. During the operation, the plastic surgeon extracts some fat from another part of the body (typically the thigh) and grafts it onto the breast tissue.

Drs. Daniel Alexander Del Vecchio and Louis Paul Bucky, who authored the study, concluded that pre-surgical breast expansion was able to solve the longstanding volume limitations of conventional fat grafts. “Pre-expansion to the breast allows for mega-volume (over 300 cc) grafting with reproducible, long lasting results that can be achieved in less than two hours,” they wrote.

Study Highlights

• 46 breasts of 25 women were operated upon
• various reasons for wanting surgery: first-time enhancement, implant removal, or correction of breast deformities
• average amount of fat transplanted was 300cc

After six months, the results of the surgery were examined. The doctors found significant improvements in size, as well as a soft and natural appearance and feel. There were no cysts, masses, or other abnormalities found under magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). No significant complications were reported.

Although more research into the long-term implications and safety issues is necessary, it seems clear that autologous fat grafting will continue to be an attractive alternative to traditional methods of breast augmentation.

Quite often, choosing an implant is difficult, as there are only subjective goals and preferences, and no medical requirements, to determine their choice.

Dr. Kara will guide you as much as possible during the breast implant selection process, using your anatomy and description of the optimal outcome to help you choose the right breast implants. In addition, knowing how saline implants and silicone implants compare will also help you make your decision.

How do the breast implants look and feel?

Both silicone and saline implants can give you a natural look, particularly if the implants are placed under the chest muscles, however silicone breast implants have a reputation for providing a more natural feel. This makes sense, given that silicone implants today are made of a cohesive gel material that more closely mimics the weight and suppleness of natural breast tissue than liquid saline solution.

Patients who are very thin or have little natural breast tissue to cover their implants are often good candidates for silicone gel implants because the implants are softer and less prone to rippling, allowing for a more natural look and feel.

Patients with pronounced asymmetry in the size of their natural breasts may also be good candidates for saline implants, as the volume of saline solution in each implant can be adjusted to even out the breasts.

Will there be scarring after breast augmentation?

Saline breast implants are composed of an outer silicone shell and a filling of liquid saline solution. Because the saline solution can be added after the implant shells have been placed in the chest wall, the incisions needed to place saline implants are smaller.

There are also more options as to where incisions can be placed with saline implants. Unlike silicone implants, which can be inserted only through incisions in each breast fold (inframammary incisions) or along each armpit (transaxillary incisions), saline implants can also be inserted through incisions around the border of each areola (periareolar incisions) and even through the belly button (TUBA incision).

Thus, saline implants result in smaller scars (about half an inch smaller) than silicone implants and offer more options for patients in terms of where their breast augmentation scars are located.

How much do breast implants cost?

Breast implant manufacturers charge about $1,000 more for silicone breast implants than saline breast implants, so breast augmentation with silicone implants is always more expensive initially.

Also, consider that patients with silicone implants should have an MRI three years after surgery and every two years thereafter, as there is no other way to detect breast cancer or implant ruptures with silicone implants. Saline implants, on the other hand, will visibly deflate if they are ruptured and can still allow mammograms to detect cancer.

Due to the cost of MRIs, maintaining silicone implants is more expensive in the long term as well.

It is easy to get overwhelmed evaluating the pros and cons of each breast implant material, but before you do, remember that you have a guiding light in this process: your plastic surgeon. Dr. Kara has several years of experience and has helped hundreds of Toronto breast enhancement patients choose the best implants for them.

Trust Dr. Kara to help you make this important decision, and feel free to ask questions, talk to other breast augmentation patients and look at plenty of before and after photos before you decide on silicone or saline breast implants.

The study, which is preliminary and has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, found that while implants can often interfere with mammograms, this did not contribute to a lower rate of survival. Instead, it points to the importance of regular MRI and ultrasound screening for breast implant patients.

With over 318,000 procedures performed in 2010, breast implants are one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries in the United States. With breast cancer affecting one out of every eight women, says Dr. Ramona Bates from eMax Health, this means that “more than 35,000 of the women who had breast augmentation in the year 2010 can be expected to develop breast cancer.”

If you consider that these numbers reflect only last year’s numbers, it’s clear that this issue actually has serious implications for hundreds of thousands of women.

Many experts believe that breast implants affect a patient’s chances for breast cancer survival because the implants interfere with early diagnosis. The scarring caused by the surgery, they say, is likely to obscure the signs of the disease, and later discovery will typically mean a poorer outcome. The authors of the study, Dr. Jessica Rayhanabad and her colleagues, realized that they could use an existing database of breast cancer patients to compare survival rates. If the prevailing theory were true, then augmented patients would have lower survival rates, because of later diagnosis.

The study analyzed 5,005 patient profiles, 195 of which had breast implants. It found that there was no substantial difference between the two groups, with rates of ten-year survival being 83% for augmented patients and 82% for non-augmented patients. Augmented patients were more likely to have cancers that were palpable, but there was no difference among rates of distant recurrence, tumor size, nuclear grade, or survival.

The procedure, known as breast lipoaugmentation because it uses fat for augmentation, allows the surgeon great flexibility in determining the new shape of the breast.

However, there has been an ongoing controversy in how much fat actually survives after lipoaugmentation, as well as fears about whether the procedure might make cancer detection more difficult.

Advantages:

• Breast lipoaugmentation avoids the risks associated with alternative procedures like tissue grafts and implants.
• Surgeons have greater control over the shape of the breast because they can target specific areas.
• A 2009 comprehensive literature review found that there was no compelling evidence to show that fat grafts interfere with breast cancer detection. Women can take added steps to ensure their safety, such as a mammogram or MRI before the procedure to assist radiologists.

Disadvantages:

• Breast lipoaugmentation can only upgrade the breast by one cup size, and cannot provide the much larger sizes associated with implants.
• Between 20 to 25% of the transplanted fat is likely to die. This is because fat, as living tissue, requires oxygen from the blood in order to survive. Research is ongoing to determine what combination of techniques might be best to prevent cell mortality; there has been very promising work done with bodily stem cells.

According to ModernMedicine.com, the unique advantages and drawbacks of breast lipoaugmentation make it especially well-suited to use in conjunction with breast implants. Instead of considering whether lipoaugmentation or implants might be appropriate, the article suggests that the best results may often arise from the two techniques working in tandem.

China ranks third in the world for cosmetic surgery with over two million operations annually, according to a 2009 estimate by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery cited in the New York Times. However, since the number of operations practically doubles each year, it can be expected that the rate of operations now far exceeds that estimate.

According to Ma Xiaowei, China’s vice health minister, plastic surgery is the fourth most popular outlet for discretionary spending in China, exceeded only by houses, cars, and travel.

The cosmetic surgery industry in China has been shaped by the desires of its clientele. Like their counterparts in New York’s Chinese communities, China’s affluent plastic surgery patients often pursue double eyelid surgery, a procedure that adds a crease to the eyelid and makes the eyes appear larger and more prominent on the face. Rhinoplasties that make the nose appear more prominent are another trend that runs contrary to Western experience. Jawlines are reshaped to appear narrower and longer. All of these appeal to uniquely Chinese conceptions of beauty.

Unfortunately, it seems that China has been unable to regulate this budding industry, and the country is awash with unlicensed clinic and hospital employees, poor equipment, and flagrant cases of medical malpractice. Botox injections are illegally and openly administered in beauty parlours. In recent years, there have been a number of preventable deaths. These tragedies underscore the need for greater regulation and stronger enforcement in the country’s medical infrastructure as a whole.