Jeremy A. Benedetti, MD, FACS

Immediately following surgery most people eat simple soft foods for the night following surgery and next morning given chance of having some nausea with anesthesia.  Our anesthesiologists do quite well with medications before, during and after surgery though to reduce the risks of nausea and vomiting after anesthesia.  Thereafter, most people resume a normal healthy diet preferably high in protein and daily MVI.

Rarely I’ll do a facelift without a necklift. There are some people who just need the middle portion of the face and the jowls corrected. Typically it’s a nice correction from the crow’s-feet down to the jowl line. There are a lot of people, especially in Florida, who are good at protecting the face from the sun and not the neck. This can lead to wrinkling and laxity and sometimes banding on the neck. A necklift addresses tightening of the neck at a sharper angle and basically unmasks what’s underneath. A necklift is from the corners of the mouth to the base of the neck. A lot of people benefit from both procedures combined.

I like doing cheek and chin implants; however, if a patient is uncertain about it, oftentimes I’ll do a filler procedure so they can get an idea of what the change will be. Cheeks are a good example. I’ll use Radiesse or Juvéderm Ultra Plus XC. Once they see the changes, we might move forward with a permanent implant. I’m a big fan of cheek and chin implants in the right patient.

We do not inject BOTOX into the breasts.  This reader may be referring to injecting fillers or fat into the breasts.  I do not recommend injecting fillers into the breasts although in Europe that is being done on rare occasions with one of the body fillers that is not available in the US.  Injecting fat into the breasts is still considered in the infancy in the United States.  Studies are showing some promise but the amount of enhancement and size achieved with fat transfers is typically less than a cup size and not as dramatic as with implants.  I do not currently recommend fat injections of the breast in my practice.

The majority of the augmentations that I do are below the muscle for this reason as well as others.  A very good support  bra is much more critical with implants on top of the muscle for obvious reasons of less support in that position.  It has also been shown that implants behind the muscle have a lower chance of developing scar tissue (capsular contracture).  

I tell patients that the clock shouldn’t start until after they’ve completed breast feeding. I recommend at least six to nine moths after that. Women know their bodies really well. If they can tell that their breasts haven’t changed in several months, I take that into consideration as well.

>The vast majority of my patients don’t fall in this category. The results of weight gain can be a little strange because if we remove fat, patients don’t tend to gain weight in the area we’ve taken that tissue from. So you’ll see it accumulate in the hips and thighs or butt instead of the belly. Now, to be clear, fat removal doesn’t make you gain weight elsewhere, it’s just that if you do happen to gain weight, you’re more likely to see it appear in a different area.

Absolutely. I think that’s the face is the most predictable area to use fat transfer. I commonly use with facelifts and necklifts. From what I’ve seen, the blood supply in the face is excellent so if the fat is transferred properly, meaning we harvest and centrifuge it properly and we transfer it in very small amounts in the right areas, then we get a predictable take. I definitely think it’s a good option in addition to a facelift procedure. In fact, I don’t routinely do fat transfers by themselves.

My favorite endoscopic procedure is the endoscopic browlift. It uses five small incisions in the hairline and I also use the Endotyne forehead fixation devices. They help maintain the results early on and after about a year to 14 months they are absorbed after everything has healed in place. The browlift is so nice and subtle but it still rejuvenates the upper eyelids, brow and forehead. I most commonly combine this with upper blepharoplasty or both upper and lower blepharoplasty.

I tell patients that the clock shouldn’t start until after they’ve completed breast feeding. I recommend at least six to nine moths after that. Women know their bodies really well. If they can tell that their breasts haven’t changed in several months, I take that into consideration as well.