Posts Tagged ‘facial aesthetic surgery’

Is Your iPhone Giving You Wrinkles?

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

Is Your iPhone Giving You Wrinkles? In today’s world, people have enough outside stresses to blame for their wrinkles and aging face. However, with the invention of the smart phone, there came a new platform for wrinkles—the iPhone squint. With the amount of time that people spend on their cell phones increasing every year, it’s no wonder that your iPhone or Blackberry might be to blame for your crow’s feet or brow lines. As a facial plastic surgeon in Charlotte, I will provide tips to my patients on how they can avoid falling victim to the cell-phone squint, and what you can do to erase your wrinkles and crow’s feet.

Avoiding The Cell-Phone Squint

Imagine the amount of time that you spend on your cell phone every day—for most Americans, cell phones are used not only for phone calls, but for sending countless text messages, browsing the internet, sending emails, and even shopping. It’s no secret that all of this time certainly adds up, adding a great deal of eye strain that causes us to squint. This is what ultimately results in formation of fine lines and wrinkles around our eyes. If you’ve ever found yourself locked in a gaze with your smart phone, here are some helpful tips to avoid excessive facial strain:

Turn Down Your Brightness

One thing that people don’t realize is that the brightness on our phone is controllable, and a phones factory setting usually comes with it set at the brightest level.  Long term visualization of the bright screen causes facial strain. Simply turning down the brightness  won’t only extend your battery life but it will also will help prevent wrinkles and the formation crows feet.

Take A Break

Cell phones  are in essence miniature computers.It’s important to remember to take a break for a few moments. It’s important  to allow your eyes to relax and readjust. This break will decrease eye strain that leads to eye wrinkles.

Make Your Text Bigger

How many times a day are you squinting to see a text message or an email on your cell phone?  We probably squint more looking at our phone than being outside in the sun.  Increasing the text size on your phone will help prevent eye strain and wrinkles.

Botox For Wrinkles

If you are still experiencing wrinkles around you eyes after changing your cell phone settings, Botox may be a great option for you.  As a Botox expert in Charlotte, I can help patients reduce and diminish their unwanted facial lines around their eyes. Botox is injected with minimal discomfort and requires no down time.  Patients may continue with their everyday activities immediately after leaving the office.

To learn more about Botox and whether or not you might be a good candidate, please contact my office today by calling (704) 323-5090 to schedule your initial consultation. Remember, it’s very important to enlist the help of a facial plastic surgeon in Charlotte for your Botox needs to ensure that your injections are properly performed and that you your needs are met entirely.

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Too Much Facial Volume Can Be Aging… Just Look at Heidi Montag

Friday, February 17th, 2012

About this time last year, Heidi Montag, a reality TV star from the popular MTV reality show, The Hills, underwent 10 aesthetic surgical procedures at the age of 24.  It is hard for me to comprehend why a young beautiful girl would undergo extensive surgery like this.

Check her out:

http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/69703/The-Hills-Heidi-Montag-Still-Looks-Puffy-And-Blotchy-After-Last-Years-Extensive-Plastic-Surgery-

I can tell you 2 things:

1)  I loved her show and I thought she was beautiful

2)  If she came to my office and inquired about these 10 procedures…I would not have performed them.

People ask, why would you turn down a patient?  Patients have to be physically and mentally healthy to undergo facial aesthetic surgery.  If I had a patient who asked to look like Barbie, as Heidi requested, I would have first considered her mental health as unstable and would have advised her against any sort of facial cosmetic surgery until she became mentally stable.

The loss of volume as we age is a part of the aging process.  Restoration of this volume with facial fillers (Restylane, Perlane, Juvederm), Sculptra, or autologous fat grafting can be a wonderful option for rejuvenating the face.  Heidi’s young face had not lost volume.  In her mid-twenties, she had the perfect balance of definition and volume. During her surgery, it appears that she may have had fat transferred from her body to her face. This addition of volume has over-inflated her face and blunted her naturally beautiful lines, arches, and facial contours.  She appears to almost have a “fat” person’s face on a very skinny and unnatural-appearing body (This would be an entire other story!)

What is the POINT!?

No point or philosophy in facial plastic surgery is simple.  A blanket statement stating that adding volume to the face creates a youthful appearance is not correct.  As a facial specialist, I have to identify if the patient has lost volume, the location of the lost volume, and the best method to re-fill.  As you can see, adding volume to the wrong areas of the face can cause an unattractive outcome.

As a fellowship trained facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Kulbersh offers facial fillers at his offices in Charlotte and Columbia.

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Using Rib Cartilage in Revision Rhinoplasty

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Revision rhinoplasty is one of the most rewarding and challenging surgeries in facial cosmetic surgery.  Patients seeking a revision rhinoplasty in Charlotte normally come to my office with a different mindset than patients who are seeking their first nose job. For whatever the reason, patients seeking a revision are normally unhappy with their previous results. This unhappiness has normally led to a change in self confidence and a diminishing in their confidence and trust in doctors.  More than any other facial aesthetic surgery, a revision nose job should be done by a nasal specialist, due to the complex anatomy of the nose and importance of the appearance of the nose for the overall look of the face.

When seeing a patient at a consultation for a revision nose job, I inquire about their previous rhinoplasty(ies), their goals, and their desires. After establishing a trusting relationship between both parties, I develop a surgical approach to improve the nose.  I use two general approaches:

1)  Camouflage Revision Rhinoplasty

2)  Reverse Reconstructive Revision Rhinoplasty

In a camouflage revision nose job, the nose has proper underlying support, but has a poor appearance.  In this situation, I will use either an open or closed rhinoplasty approach to place tissue, grafts, and sutures to refine the nose and create an appealing appearance.

In a reverse reconstructive revision rhinoplasty, the nose has collapsed, lost its supporting foundation, and patients are normally unable to breath through the nose. These patients require the facial plastic surgeon to rebuild the underlying cartilaginous support to the nose and reconstruct it.  This may require a significant amount of straight and strong cartilage. The first option for cartilage is septal cartilage.  Often this cartilage is not available due to its removal during a previous surgery.  The next available option is ear cartilage in combination with a new product, PDS plate.  The ear cartilage is not straight or strong enough to reconstruct a nose.  The PDS plate is a sheet of suture material that straightens and strengthens the cartilage so it may be used in nasal reconstruction.

The final option for cartilage is to take it from the rib.  This cartilage is very strong and straight and is the best material to use when rebuilding a collapsed nose.  Typically, a small incision is hidden in the breast crease.  The patient will not experience any changes in their breathing or have a hole in their rib cage.  In fact, sometimes the rib will actually partially reform!  I will only use this procedure if it is absolutely necessary.  I believe as a rhinoplasty specialist, it is imperative to offer this procedure as there will be some patients that require rib cartilage.

Other surgeons will use foreign implants in the nose.  While this can be an option, I prefer to use the body’s natural material and believe using your own rib is safer in the long term.

Revision nose jobs in Charlotte should be done by a nasal specialist.  Dr. Kulbersh is a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon who completed special training and has a vast interest in revision nose jobs.  He has offices in Charlotte and Columbia.

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Rhinoplasty Techniques to Narrow a Wide Nose

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

One common goal during a nose job in Charlotte is to narrow a wide nose.  This is commonly a complaint in ethnic rhinoplasty including African American rhinoplasty patients.  When I examine a nose for its width, I want to see a gentle curve starting from the eyebrows going to the crease of the nostrils.  The nostril width should be about the same distance wide as the space between the eyes.  If this curve is not gentle or the nose is wider than the space between the eyes, then narrowing the nose during a rhinoplasty may be a good option for the patient.

The nose is most commonly narrowed by two techniques, alar base reduction and breaking the nasal bones (nasal osteotomies).  Alar base reduction is used to narrow wide nostrils.  Tissue has to be removed from the nostrils, so incisions have to be made on the skin.  I hide these incisions in the crease of the nose, so they are not noticeable.  This can be a powerful procedure to narrow the nostrils.

The width of the nose above the nostrils is not due to excess tissue, but secondary to wide nasal bones.  The only way to narrow this area of the nose is to break the bones. After breaking the bones, their position can be moved to narrow the nose.  This is routinely done in my rhinoplasties in Columbia and Charlotte. Breaking these bones may increase swelling and bruising after the nose job, but the results are worth it.

One final trick used to narrow the nose is to make the nose stick out farther from the face. A nose that is too close to the face is rounder and less triangular.  When the nose is viewed from the front, the round nose looks wider than it actually is.  If the nose is made less rounded and more triangular, then it will appear smaller than it actually is.  It is similar to viewing a tee-pee from the sky.  If a tee-pee is laying flat on the ground it will look round and wide.  If you put a pole in the middle of the tee-pee and make it into a tent, it will look smaller and narrower.  In some patients, the addition of a nasal projection to make the nose stick farther out from the face is the most important part of the rhinoplasty, making the nose appear more defined and narrow.  This is commonly the case in African American nose jobs in Charlotte.  

Dr. Jonathan Kulbersh is an ethnic rhinoplasty specialist.  He is a board certified doctor who trained with the best surgeons in Beverly Hills.  He has offices in Columbia and Charlotte serving all the Carolinas.  He specializes in only facial aesthetic surgery and facial reconstructive surgery.  

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