This week, Q-Med, the Swedish pharmceutical company that is the home to Restylane and Perlane, announced Restylane® Lidocaine and Restylane Perlane™ Lidocaine as the latest additions to their Restylane family of dermal fillers. These products have the familiar Restylane and Perlane hyaluronic gel fillers, together with a small amount (0.3 %) of lidocaine, a commonly used […]
Here’s a great story of performing under pressure: A doctor in rural Australia used a household drill to bore into a skull of a young boy with a head injury, to drain a potentially-lethal blood clot. The local hospital did not have neurosurgical tools or a neurosurgeon on site, and the young boy was in […]
I noticed a new (to me) product at the 2009 ASAPS meeting: a saline-filled lip implant. I kid you not. Known as VeraFIl, it has actually been FDA approved for about a year. Essentially, it is a tapered tubular implant with a silicone shell and a gore-tex outer coating. A tunnel is made in the […]
One of the big topics of discussion at ASAPS this year was biofilms. Biofilms are a type of bacterial contamination that loves to form on solid, implanted devices like man-made heart valves, contact lenses, orthopedic implants, and yes…breast implants. There is a growing body of research that suggests that these biofilms are linked to the #1 […]
At the recent ASAPS meeting, a number of breakthrough new technologies were presented, as potential alternatives / improvements on the standard liposuction technique. Bear in mind that most of these wonder gadgets are still in the developmental phase, and do not yet have FDA approval. But some of the before & after photos looked pretty […]
Sounds like science fiction, right? – a wrinkle-fighter that works without needles… One of the coolest products in development that I heard about at the ASAPS meeting belongs to a company called Revance therapeutics, based in Palo Alto, California. They seem to be the first ones to have cracked the problem of getting large molecules into […]
One of the hallmarks of unfortunate plastic surgery in many celebrity photos is the overdone lip augmentation. The lips in these photos generally appear overstuffed, like two tubes, or two sausages lying side by side. The real reason that these results are bad is that the idea of creating a beautiful normal lip has gone out the window! […]
As we’ve discussed earlier, Botox injections are the most popular cosmetic procedure overall in the U.S. But Botox is expensive – and Allergan, the manufacturer, has been steadily raising their prices each year. This has created a black market for Botox, with counterfeit and imitation Botox knock-offs. These imitations are not FDA-approved, and vary widely […]
Botox competitor “Reloxin” (sold in Europe as “Dysport”) received its FDA approval today. The FDA decided to approve both the cosmetic indications (for wrinkles) and the functional indications (cervical dystonia) at the same time – and decided that the drug should be sold under the same name for both categories. So, it’s now officially “Dysport” […]
The most important educational meeting for aesthetic plastic surgeons, in my opinion, is the ASAPS annual meeting. It’s happening next week – and yours truly will be there. We’ll hear “what’s hot”, “what’s new” and “what’s not working”. All of the “major league” players of aesthetic plastic surgery will be there, discussing the best ways […]
