Plastic Surgery - Rhinoplasty - Face Lift - Chemical Peels - Browplasty - Blepharoplasty - Plastic Surgeon - Facial Beauty

The cause:

Wrinkles are often an element which people worry about as they age.  Wrinkles are due to a number of factors.  Loss of fat under your skin, loss of water absorbing sugar-proteins, loss of collagen fibers, sun damage and loss of functional elastic fibers can all play important roles in wrinkle production.  The end result is that the action of your facial muscles as well as gravitational changes can produce permanent fibrous contractures within your skin layers that present as wrinkles.

The Treatment:

Treating wrinkles is one of the ways to make a person appear more youthful.  This can be accomplished in a number of different ways.  Injecting materials into the skin can take away some wrinkles.  These materials range from fat, and dermal tissue to hyaluronic acid (Restylane, Captique), collagen (Zyderm, Zyplast), and lactic acid (Sculptra).  Botox, a neuromuscular agent, can decrease the muscular activity of select muscles to decrease unwanted wrinkles.  Many of these procedures are temporary, but some are more permanent.  One way to decrease the wrinkles in your face is through chemical peeling.  This option involves using a liquid agent (tricholoracetic acid, Jessner's peel, lactic acid, salicylic acid, phenol, etc) to remove the superficial layers of the skin.  What is left behind are the hair follicles which have skin cells deep within the follicular structure.  These remaining skin cells within the hair follicle are then able to grow over the cells removed with the chemical liquid.  What you get is a new skin layer with healthier cells, and a new layer of collagen underneath.  This results in less wrinkling and also a decrease in the number of older cells that can lead to other unwanted things such as cancer and other skin lesions.  There are superficial, medium-depth and deep peels.  The deeper you go, the riskier it gets in terms of scarring and adverse results.  The deeper you go, however, the more wrinkles you can potentially remove.

The patient shown in the photographs had a medium depth peel (30-35% trichloroacetic acid and Jessner's medium depth peel) combined with a new technique called dermasanding.  A medium depth peel can remove fine and course wrinkles, unwanted pigmentation, and can improve the color of the skin remarkably.  This type of medium depth peeling has been shown in scientific, peer-reviewed trials to be a very safe concentration to bring great results and yet minimize the risk of scarring. The dermasanding was done mainly in the cheek area where you see the pink color.  This is the only area the patient wanted more aggressive treatment.  Dermasanding can be applied to all areas of the face if done properly.  It can be used to treat the more prominent and deeper wrinkles.  The post peel photo is 3 months after her first peel.  The redness will eventually go away.  Notice how the skin appears smoother and the fine wrinkles are much less apparent.  In person, her skin looks like a baby's especially where the dermasanding was applied!