From as far back as my early youth I used to look at myself in the mirror and see quite an attractive girl. I had a cute face and a slim body, but the look would always stop at my legs and calves. \"Too skinny\" – I thought. Of course, my jeans had always been my salvation as I hid my legs in them. I could wear a short skirt only in my dreams. But this could not last for ever, and once I made up my mind to act. First it was gym: I was grimly determined to train my calves, but at my very first session I heard from the trainer that it is the most hard-growing and hard-to-train muscle in the human body as it is involved in walking every day and its natural shape can hardly be corrected. Yes, it was not that comforting!

My friend pushed me to the next stage, as she had her breasts lifted after breastfeeding. \"What if aesthetic surgery helps me?\" – I thought. And then I started to surf the Internet. I could have never expected to find so many \"sisters\" in my misery. I had been chatting in forums for 1.5 years. Some girls, as me, just chatted and collected information, hesitating to proceed with any action, and some really did and had operations.

I saw pictures of legs with inserted implants. Calves got bigger, but they seemed so unnatural, that I could never agree to have some foreign stuff placed inside me as implants. Then girls started writing more on lipofilling, i.e. implantation of own fat into calves. The photos looked quite natural as well. And I finally made up my mind.

Good reviews and recommendations on the web-site lead me to a clinic and I signed up for an appointment with the plastic surgeon. A week of waiting… and here I go, with my skinny legs trembling and my head going dizzy! Now I realize, I had nothing to fear. At the appointment, the doctor explained everything to me: where they take the fat from, how it is placed along the calf, how much time it takes to recover – he answered to all my questions. We agreed on everything and set the date of the surgery. Every day of these three weeks, I thought about the operation, and I could not imagine how I would feel with my new legs! To be honest, I was ready to suffer all this time during the surgery and after it, during the recovery stage, but there was no need to! Everything passed smoother than I had expected.

Staying in my room before the surgery I felt quite nervous – to say the least. And then, after having talked to the anesthetist – he told me about the anesthesia, and that I won’t feel anything during the operation – I calmed down a bit. The nurses encouraged me, and after the operation was over and I woke up from narcosis, they took care of me and made me feel better. I was so grateful to them! When I woke up completely, the surgeon came to see me. I cannot clearly recall what he told me, but he was smiling and this helped me calm down. Actually my legs were bandaged and I could not see the result. After a while, I realized I’d have to be more patient. At first, I did feel like a handicapped person: the nurses helped me to get up and walk. I had a very cozy room there: the bed was remote controlled, I had a TV, and the meals were good.

I really hadn’t expected everything to go this way. Now four months have already passed and my legs look absolutely stunning! They were swollen at first, but now my surgeon says I can even wear heels. I have not yet overcame the \"complex\" in my head, but I love my legs so much that can\’t help smiling when I look at them. Now I know what it feels like when dreams come true. I so much appreciate the work of the clinic team, and I’m grateful to my surgeon for my happiness. God bless his hands!

posted in: Patient stories

Hi! I’m April. By telling my story I want to give a ray of hope to those suffering because of their physical imperfections.

From my early childhood, I’d always get picked on. Kids at school would call me jug-eared. Yes, nature did give me big ears. And of course, this was my raw spot. Boys would keep hassling me. And not for friendly reasons, but to give me another hurtful nickname. To hide my flaw I wore long hair that covered my ears. This was twice offending, because my hair is made to be styled in ponytails and braids.

Time passed, I graduated from college, but my problem was still with me. Seeing my despair, a friend of mine, a former classmate who had always been the first beauty at school, advised me: “Why don\’t you go and see a plastic surgeon?” Even just visiting a dentist had always been a nightmare for me; and now I was advised to lie down on an operating table! Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about this possibility.

I realized this was definitely the only way to get rid of my handicap. Putting myself in hands of a surgeon wasn’t an easy step to make. TV commercials, magazine ads and websites flashed with recommendations to visit one or another clinic. I almost gave up my idea: I was so tired of searching. But then a friend of mine introduced me to one of her colleagues. Prett Very quickly we discovered that we share a common “ear story”. But her ears didn’t look anything like mine: they looked so neat and pretty. I simply couldn’t believe she ever had to worry about them. She she gave me the clinic web-site address.

I looked through patient reviews and finally made up mind. To my surprise, the surgeon appeared to be a beautiful woman. Her confident voice calmed me down. After the appointment, we chose the day of the operation. I’ve never been so nervous in my whole life!

I showed up at the clinic on the appointed day and was taken straight to my room. It I was clean and cozy with nice colorful bed sheets on the bed. The nurse turned on the TV, measured my blood pressure and said that the anesthetist was about to come. It seemed it took him forever to make it to my room.

Then the anesthetist finally came, and that seemed to slightly calm me down. I felt even better when the doctor said the surgery would be made with local anesthesia, but I wouldn’t feel anything. After the anesthetist had gone, my surgeon came; her voice encouraged me once again. The nurse gave me an injection and I was left waiting for the operation to begin. Then I started to feel drowsy.
Lying on the operating table, I could see the eyes of the surgeon. By her side was the anesthetist who was cheering me up in every possible way.

I got completely relaxed. To my surprise, everything happened very quickly. When I was already in my room, the nurse, the anesthetist, and the surgeon would visit me from time to time. And they all were very kind to me. I was so curious about the result, but my head was bandaged. Next day, my ears and the area around them started to hurt a little, which I didn’t expect. You can’t be prepared to things like that!

A day later, when I came back for bandaging, I looked in the mirror and got scared – my ears were puffy and purple in color! I started crying. My surgeon reassured me that the swelling would be off, and the bruises would soon disappear too. A couple of days later, the swelling started to go away, and with it the pain was gone too.
And now, just a couple of months later, I admire my reflection in the mirror.

Now I can style my hair any way I want it! With all my heart, I’m grateful to my surgeon and the clinic team for their help in coping with my fear of the surgery, for their kindness, and for making me happy!

posted in: Patient stories

A procedure that is commonly called Botox is in fact a set of poison (literally) injections. The poison’s scientific name is Botulinum Toxin. This kind of toxin is used to paralyze facial mimic muscles that are responsible for  facial expression and mimic wrinkles – notorious crow’s feet, horizontal forehead creases, frown lines. Botox helps to make this mimicry less expressive, which further results in partial straightening (temporary) of those wrinkles.

This cosmetic effect of Botox was discovered randomly. Originally Botox was used to treat eye tic and one of the doctors noted that toxin had a weird side effect of wrinkle straightening. Read full…

posted in: Antiaging

Any person not related to the world of plastic surgery would be quite amazed to learn what a diversity of implants (silicone protheses) are emplaced in patients’ faces and bodies on daily basis all over the world. Today implants are used to solve a whole range of problems.

First of all – breast augmentation – the procedure when a circular shaped endoprothesis (can be filled with silicone gel or saline solution) is emplaced inside of the breast, under lacteal gland or under a muscle.

Huge number of face implant emplacements are also performed. In this case full body implants are used. This type of implants is not filled with anything. They are just homogeneous pieces either of silicone rubber or of porous polyurethane resin that grow into tissues during several months after the operation.

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posted in: Face surgery

From anatomical perspective a nose can be described as a construction of bones and cartilages covered by skin. In order to change nose shape plastic surgeon needs to insert a surgical instrument underneath the skin and alter the form and placement of osteo-chondral carcass. That’s how we can describe rhinoplasty.

There are two kinds of rhinoplasty: open and closed.

In an “open” rhinoplasty, a small incision is made in the columella, which is a little column of skin that separates two nostrils. That incision allows the nasal skin to be lifted off of the tip of the nose up to the forehead area so the doctor can work with the open frame. When operation is finished, skin is moved back and secured with a cosmetic suture.

In closed rhinoplasty all incisions are made inside, on the mucous membrane of the nostrils. Doctor uses those incisions to separate skin from osteo-chondral carcass and stretch skin to gain access to cartilages and bones. All of it is done without any disruption to skin layer that helps to eliminate scarring.
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posted in: Rhinoplasty

Technically liposuction is considered one of the most basic operations in the field of plastic surgery. F.i. rhinoplasty is not a procedure of choice for many practicing plastic surgeons: most aesthetic medicine professionals try to stay away from it and only a limited number of specialists do it right. Liposuction, on the contrary, often becomes a gateway operation for unexperienced doctors. As a result there is a great proliferation of sham clinics who offer excess fat removal left and right. Experimenting in lipoplasty is not rare as it’s really hard to fail completely at it. In some cases there won’t be any visible impact and plastic surgeоn would  just shrug his shoulders. In worst case scenario there will be some superficial irregularities of skin like focal skin lumpiness or dents (similar to washboard). In those circumstances it’s rather common for plastic surgeons to try to persuade their unlucky patients that this kind of outcome is a logical consequence of fat reduction procedure, which of course is not true.

The morale of the story is that a good and experienced plastic surgeon is the key to get the desired outcome. Your surgeon has to be well-versed in anatomy, have a a substantial work experience and be a real professional.  Read full…

posted in: Liposuction

Plump lips have always been a symbol of eroticism and sexuality, for a woman with plump lips externalizes desire: as if she is pouting her lips for a kiss in an unwitting temptation and enchanting. The fair sex has at all times craved after an easy way of lip augmentation. Nowadays medical science has at last found a method which can at the same time be considered accessible, quick and relatively safe – it is referred to lip plumping with the aid of injections either of artificial gel or of own fat.

Gel injection into lips is a common procedure carried by a cosmetologist in his office, whereas fat injection, the so-called lip lipofilling, is rather a complex technique that should be performed by a plastic surgeon. The essence of lipofilling is the following: a patient is taken fat cells from a chosen body area, and then these sells are injected into lips with a syringe. This, as it would seem, natural way of filling lips with the own “material” has, unfortunately, essential faults that make this method alas still less popular.

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posted in: Injections

The size and the form of a breast after mammaplasty depend on the choice of breast implants. According to their quality properties the endoprostheses are classified into gel, saline, single-chamber, dual-chamber, round-shaped, anatomic, textured, smooth, high-profile and low-profile implants.

For a new person it is easy to get lost among these characteristics, that is why we will try to give a simple and comprehensive classification of implants that are now used in breast augmentation.

So, all the endoprostheses of the mammary gland (breast implants) present hermetic sacks made of thin cover filled with a special composition that by feeling shall resemble a natural woman’s breast.

All these sacks (implants) have a silicone cover. That is so-called silicone rubber, a thin silicone elastoplastic that has been recognized for today as the optimal material for all breast endoprostheses.
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posted in: Mammoplasty

The first step in breast augmentation implants is to choose between the so-called cilicone and saline prostheses. As it was already mentioned in the section Types of Breast Implants, the main alternative to silicone filling is physilological solution (0.9% solution of salt in water).

Implants filled with physical solution are called saline. In distinction from silicone ones, they are produced with no filling or hermiticity but empty and with a hole in the cover.

The surgeon places the empty cover of the implant in the breast and fills it through a tube right in the patient’s body. The breast becomes bigger in the doctor’s eyes, and when the necessary esthetic result is achieved the tube is removed, and the hole in the cover is sealed with a valve.

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posted in: Mammoplasty

It all began when I went to the elementary school – that’s when I started being concerned with my jaw noticing that it was somewhat “different”. My lower jaw was protruding. But back then I had no idea what was to become of my life because of that shortcoming…

The older I grew, the more it was sticking out… People started picking on me… Besides, I had a very long chin… And it just looked wrong…

I would often cry myself to sleep but I never dared say a word to my parents about the surgery… Besides, back then I had no idea such surgeries were even an option. Read full…

posted in: Patient stories