Red Carpet Over-Plumping
January 30th, 2012
It’s Hollywood Award Season again. You might remember the Foster Farms ad campaign for their chicken products about over-plumping. In their television commercial, chickens are seen in a plastic surgeon’s office receiving injections to make them plumper. It is quite obvious that they are way too plump. This situation is underscored by the distorted facial appearance of the surgeon’s nurse when she finally reveals her face to the camera. It is a funny parody of the sometimes over-zealous use of fillers in Hollywood, perhaps on the Red Carpet this time of year.
I see over-plumping all the time, especially in the lips. The individuals, usually women, loose all of their natural lip shape and end up with what is often referred to as “trout pout.” They look as if the they have sausages for lips. The over-injection usually masks all natural proportion. The television commercial effectively uses this phenomenon for optimum comedic effect. However, I agree with the tagline, over plumping is never good.
A word of caution, the over-injection of any area of the body can lead to skin loss and terrible, uncorrectable scarring. The large volume of material simply reduces the blood flow to the treated area in such a way that the skin, muscle and fat die. Fortunately, this complication is very rare when only modest amounts of filler materials are used.
Finally, please avoid all silicone injections for any cosmetic reasons. The risk of chronic long term inflammation which arises is not worth it.
Dr. Bashioum on KARE TV Evening News
January 27th, 2012
I was recently interviewed for a television news segment for KARE-11 TV. It is a story about a popular body modification trend, called ear gaging, One of my patients seeking to have the gaging appearance reversed, also participated. We were originally interviewed for an article by Jeff Strickler at the Minneapolis StarTribune. The procedure that is needed to restore ear lobes to approximate normal looking ears requires cosmetic surgery.