Plastic Surgery: Beauty or Flaw?

As modern life brings about so much pressure, many females and males have thought of undergoing plastic surgery with aims to enhance their physical attributes and beauty to make them a youthful look. This is particularly obvious among PR personnel, physicians, publishers, advertisers, reporters, and even TV performers who are always striving with every attempt to enhance their younger appearance. Plastic surgery as its name suggests is nothing new in Hollywood, because almost all Hollywood stars are now being “packaged” their external appearance with “plastics” to achieve a “forever young” expression.   

Nowadays, plastic surgery is in the surge, and it has no longer an expensive luxury expense to be affordable by most people. Due to this reason, most teenagers have taken this advantage to imitate their favorite idols by altering their natural appearances in order to achieve their desired self-esteem. Since 2000, plastic surgery procedures from Botox to boob jobs, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ statistics, have increased up to 50%. Looking at this growing trend, should you put your dreams of youthful look by means of plastic surgery procedures?

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Plastic (a word which is derived from a Greek “plastikos” which means to shape or to mold) surgery, basically, refers to a medical procedure performed by a plastic surgeon who alters the appearance of the body via a surgery procedure to give the client a better or youthful look. The surgery here takes a variety field of microsurgery, pediatric surgery, hand surgery, aesthetic (cosmetic) surgery, burn surgery, craniofacial surgery and etc.

Like other surgery procedures, plastic surgery may involve the occurrence of serious medical problems or undesired side effects (complications). Sometimes, even an experienced or a qualified plastic surgeon may make mistakes particularly due to inappropriately performed surgical operations and unavoidable surgical mistakes. Alien, stretched, and expressionless faces worn by some celebrities are cases of disfigurements and even deaths can be resulted from a wrongly performed plastic surgery procedure. Are people with plastic surgery really that much happier than they were in the good old days?

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Scars are common risk in plastic procedures. Some of those scars are permanent and thus they can’t be removed. However, some scars go away over the time but some can only be removed by performing another surgery. Indeed, the unexpected errors made by plastic surgeons can cost a patient a lifetime as they lead to permanent disfiguring and scaring. In the breast augmentation for instance, the marks or scars are always concealed below the line of the breast. The other effect is that a bad surgery may even cause darkening of the skin.    

In most cases, non-surgeons who are not well trained are permitted to perform plastic procedures. Worst still, some of them are claiming that they’re qualified surgeons even though they don’t have medical degrees in the related field. There is also no strict regulation on who can do the procedures and who can’t, as they’re doing it privately in their own offices. If the price seems to be “reasonable” by the patients, they’ll be forced to sign up for a procedure, without concerning much on the surgeon’s expertise, and the risk of surgery procedure. The other worst trend is that this beauty business is cropping up everywhere since the demand for surgery procedure is quite high. When patients go in for a consult, they’re not told about the risk of the surgery as most of these so-called surgeons don’t have a lot of experience. Nora Massaro for example, was forced to go for another breast surgery since her implants ruptured. She was also shocked to learn that her implants were placed above the muscle. Deaths have also been reported when patients underwent surgeries under the surgeons who aren’t certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery (ABPS). Very often, treatments which include peels, lasers and even Botox become extremely dangerous if it’s performed by unqualified and inexperienced surgeons.

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Of course, no plastic surgeons can guarantee you 100% free risk of surgical procedure. Nevertheless, competent, certified and experienced surgeons can always reduce the surgical risks and avoid the possibilities of plastic surgery mistakes. Therefore, it’s a responsibility for a patient to check if the surgeons own a genuine certification and the patient must know the risks which may involve in a plastic surgery prior to performing the surgical procedure. You shouldn’t sign an informed consent form until you’ve fully understood the potential risks involved in the plastic surgery procedure. It’s advisable to ask the surgeons a lot of questions (about the benefits, risks, side effects, recovery time, and other realistic expectations) that you may face in the plastic surgery, and if they ignore to reply you, you should walk out there.

It’s always a debatable issue to discuss the bad effects of plastic surgery. In a badly done surgery, one’s nerve can get damaged. This condition occurs when facial nerves have been disrupted due to the disturbance of the movement of facial muscles. The nerve damage is particularly obvious during a face lift which may have left the patients with mentality disturbance and dramatic consequences. Nerve damage is much worried since it can interfere the proper functioning of other parts of the body. Not only nerve damage, the mistakes done in facial plastic surgery can cause either partial or full paralysis either via tightened skin tissue or nerve injury. Facial surgery in this case, can cause early aging and tissue injury. From 1994 to 1998, about 95 patients died on the course of 5,000 liposuction procedures being done. Here lies the risk one may have faced after the surgery procedure. (Note: Temporary paralysis, in which patients find themselves difficult to speak just after the surgery is a common situation during which the effects due to the use of painkillers during the surgery procedure haven’t completely subsided. This condition normally exists for several hours).

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No matter how good your skin looks after the surgery, if the skin goes bad or has problems, generally, it won’t look attractive. All skin problems such as dimples, puckers, skin death/ necrosis or asymmetry can turn out to be a torturing nightmare for the patient. Undesired or abnormal changes which usually occur after the surgery may be observed in the smoothness, texture and/or tightness of the skin, in which these changes could be either temporary, or permanent. Numbness or loss of sensation could also be felt just after undergoing the surgery procedure, and this condition is particularly obvious when the surgery was performed around the genital area or on/around the breast.

Adverse effects of implant surgery may include drug reactions, implant rejections, wound healing problem, irregularity, hardening of the body tissues, skin necrosis/skin death (skin tissue around the area where the surgery was undertaken may become death, and they may need another surgery to get rid of them for a safety purpose. However, the removal of these death skins may unexpectedly change the appearance of the skin), unexpected disfigurement and abnormalities, gross disproportion, more scarring and complicated implant discloses. The patient may experience bleeding, pain, irritating, hernia, in a case that the stitches after the surgery have become loose.

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Other major dangers of plastic surgery include infection (may happen when patients don’t often change the dressing as instructed), blood loss, drop in blood pressure (a sudden drop can cause heart attack or irregular heart beat), slow healing (the likelihood of an unexpected infection), airway obstruction (the use of anesthetics during the surgery may irritate lungs and throats, causing the blockage of airway. In a serious case, this condition can cause death and brain damage if prompt treatment is not given), serious inner wounds, excessive bleeding (a traditional extensive liposuction can lead to the loss of blood), sensory/nerve injury (especially in the region surrounding plastic surgery), anesthesia conditions, excessive bruising, post-operative infections, blood clots (when blood clots become loose and go into a vein, it can lead to a condition called deep vein thrombosis or DVT, and eventually the loose blood clot may disrupt the flow of the blood, causing heart attack, stroke or even death), allergic reaction (due to staining of the skin, sedative or virus infection). Seroma may also occur when clear fluid accumulates beneath the skin, in which this type of swelling requires additional surgery to drain out the unwanted fluid. In very rare cases, patients experience an increased level of blood pressure, body temperature and heart rate (termed as malignant hyperthermia) much more higher than usual, and this condition is detrimentally dangerous since it may cause death if immediate medical treatment is not given. (Note: Brain damage happens when the brain doesn’t receive the supply of the adequate amount of oxygen carrying by the blood due to the use of anesthesia during the surgery procedure).

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Patients may face non-medical complications as they may have negative psychological thought on their new look. For some individuals, unfortunately, dissatisfaction arising from the flaws of surgery procedure that may have made them feeling disappointment and depressing. And in this case, they may have desperate instinct to go for another surgery. Therefore, it’s not surprising to see someone having addicted to facial plastic surgery. This happens every day. Take for an instance, the King of Pop, Michael Jackson is one of the examples of this addictive syndrome. He suffered from a psychological condition called body dysmorphic disorder (more details on this disorder, kindly visit my previous article entitled 10 shockingly eating-related diseases), and thus, he was preoccupied by his self-appearance and stronger feel of self-loathing, making him undergo nearly 20 plastic surgeries (including multiple nasal surgeries, forehead lift, lip lift, cheekbone surgery and etc.), crowning him the pinnacle of bad addictive spectrum. He is also said to have his skin bleached due to a disease called vitiligo. The plastic surgeries that he went through were rather awful until his appearances were made to “somebody” as they took no natural look of his early photo.

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It seems like the toy Barbie doll is an icon that represents perfection. For decades, this perfection has led to an unrealistic expectation among society which in turn leading to people nowadays, having too much obsessions with youthful and beauty appearance which, of course, causing their expectation of an immediate perfection right after surgery, but eventually ending up with anger towards their surgeons. You can’t ask the surgeons to turn your 80-year appearance into 20-year appearance, can you? So, in this case, there isn’t realistic enough to achieve this goal. In a nutshell, if one tries to look unrealistically younger than their actual chronological age, their appearance can end up looking extremely weird, strange, abnormal and unreal.

Well, I do understand that the most famous celebrity has much pressure from their fans, press, media, competitive job markets, particularly the entertainment industry in New York and Los Angeles. But, let’s think, using Botox to make them look like 30 instead of their real age of 70 is indeed not natural at all. Sadly to say, many celebrities in Hollywood have fallen in this category. 

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Many patients are unaware that Botox (a form of botulinum toxin), which is claimed to be a popular wrinkle fighter, can cause them cold sores. The skin necrosis may also happen when Botox is not properly injected, and when it’s injected in excess, it’ll definitely cause a bluish discoloration of the skin.

There is a practice of injecting collagen among the Hollywood community. It’s done to achieve a “desired” sexy pout particularly in a female’s lips. As a result, one may see the stars appearing with abnormal, artificial larger and grossly inflated lips. Pamela Anderson, Jessica Simpson, and Christina Aguilera are some of the examples who portray such unnatural images.

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Strangely though, there are those who tried to inject something to parts of their bodies just after the surgery procedure was performed, in which they shouldn’t without asking the surgeon’s permission. Of course, when they injected something to their bodies, they’ve to pay for the price. As told by ABC News, one Korean plastic surgery addict, Hang Mioku had used a syringe filling with cooking oil just to inject her own face. This is such a sad story!

Final remarks:

If you plan to undergo plastic surgery, you should understand the risks involved. Prior to any type of plastic surgeries, you should have a discussion with the qualified surgeon to know whether you’re suitable for the surgery based upon your living lifestyle, and medical condition. A good doctor may want to know every aspect of their patients, including what prescription medications (such as diet pills, herbs, supplements, over the counter drugs, any prescribed medications or drugs) the patients are using, health conditions (whether the patients are suffering from chronic diseases, as like diabetes, hypertension, stroke, heart failure) and they should also tell the patients about the undesired side effects involved during and after the surgery procedure. In this case, pregnant moms are strictly prohibited undergoing plastic surgery because the drugs used during the procedure may harm the fetus.

Prior to undergoing any surgery mentioned herein, please consult American Board of Medical Specialties, and Federation of State Medical Boards as well, to validate/confirm a surgeon’s medical license, skill, training, experience, certification in their recognized medical specialty. Also check if they have ever performed surgery procedures at the local hospital. You may also want to check with AAFPRS Facial Plastic Surgery Information Service to get a list of surgeons who’re properly certified to perform reconstructive or facial surgery. In addition to that, you could use The Directory of Medical Specialists which is available in almost all public libraries to check for the surgeon’s credentials. Alternatively, ASPS (American Society of Plastic Surgeon) member surgeons can also be served as your consideration, since they’re adhered to a strict code of ethics, besides receiving a specialized training and proper education to qualify as a competent surgeon.

I’d like to ask you to think twice before going for a plastic surgery. Will it be necessary for you to alter your natural appearance with an artificial false appearance? No matter how you “wrapped” your body with “plastics”, one day, they’ll shrink away, because aging is an unavoidable process. Each of us can’t escape from the aging process, as it’s a normal biological process which happens in human life. If you really want to look good, you should take care of your body when you’re still young, say 20 to 30 years old, by adopting daily nutritional diet, replenishing your body with adequate amount of water, taking shade from the sun whenever possible, getting yourself sleep well, exercising regularly, and most importantly, living healthily both mentality and physically.

Now, you can gain more health knowledge by visiting my health blog entitled HealthAssist. More upcoming updates and latest health information are right on the way!

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• Unexplainable! Body transformations that just went extreme
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