The delicate skin around your eyes is a telltale indicator of age, especially when undereye hollows create unwelcome shadows and dark circles. To resolve this issue, many people face a decision between surgical and non-surgical remedies – namely, a lower blepharoplasty or dermal fillers. Which one is better to help you meet your goals?
Lower Blepharoplasty Explained
Board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Florence Mussat can reshape your lower eyelids via a straightforward lifting surgery, using tiny incisions to prevent noticeable scarring.
The operation will reduce any undereye lines or lost volume that may cause darkness and make the area beneath your eyes look hollow. You can also combine a lower blepharoplasty with an upper eyelid lift for a comprehensive improvement to your eye beauty. The procedure takes about an hour, and recovery typically takes two to three weeks.
Dermal Fillers for Undereye Hollows
Another option for voids under your eyes is to add volume with dermal fillers. This non-surgical approach offers immediate, albeit temporary, results. A quick fix is desirable for many of our patients who have little to no free time to devote to recovery and healing. Plus, it can give you a preview of the benefits of lower eyelid surgery before making that commitment.
Which One Is for You?
The decision to get cosmetic procedures is always incredibly personal. Often, younger people who want to proactively address facial aging opt for fillers instead of surgery as a short-term fix. But once they realize what dermal fillers can do for them, many choose longer-lasting results with eyelid surgery.
Our patients over 40 typically choose the surgical route. They understand dermal fillers require touch-ups to maintain their look, and prefer the option of addressing the effects of aging on their eyes without needing follow-up treatments.
The Choice Is Yours
No matter which option you decide is better for you, choose a Chicago board-certified plastic surgeon. Dr. Mussat is a renowned cosmetic surgeon who cares for her patients. She will answer your questions and address your concerns during your initial visit.
If you are currently considering how to improve your facial beauty by addressing undereye bags or hollows, Dr. Mussat will help you choose the right path to achieve your cosmetic goals. She will work with you during your consultation and throughout the process to optimize your facial appearance.
To schedule an eyelid lift or dermal filler consultation with Dr. Mussat, contact our Chicago office online or call (312) 751-9000 today.
Valentine’s Day comes at the perfect time of year. The joy and excitement of the Christmas season are but a memory. As we eagerly begin to anticipate the arrival of spring, February brings us Valentine’s Day and, with it, a much-needed dose of fun, romance, and excitement.
With more and more people going the extra mile to look their best for Valentine’s Day, why not schedule a visit with Dr. Florence Mussat at her Chicago plastic surgery office?
Be on your way to a fresh, vibrant look with one of these 10 solutions from Dr. Mussat.
1. Restore Youthful Fullness to Your Face
Perhaps it’s due to genetics, aging, or simply your facial structure, but parts of your face could be lacking in volume and making you appear gaunt. Well, it is possible to enhance your facial volume and improve the appearance of your face with a facial fat transfer expertly performed by Dr. Mussat.
2. Fall in Love With Your Skin
Taking care of one’s skin is essential throughout the year, and there’s no better time than now to get back your radiant glow in time for Valentine’s Day with a nonsurgical facial rejuvenation treatment.
With medical-grade, topical retinoids, various conditions, including mild to moderate acne, signs of sun damage, freckles, fine lines, and wrinkles, can be treated.
3. Refresh Your Eyelids
Your eyes may be the window to your soul, but drooping eyelid skin or undereye bags could be concealing and aging your eyes, making you look tired, sad, or angry. If so, you could be a good candidate for an eyelid lift, also known as blepharoplasty. It could take years off your appearance and give your self-esteem a big boost.
4. Repair the Sun Damage
Even though summer is long gone, your skin could still be showing signs of too much sun with dryness, new lines, and wrinkles. Dr. Mussat offers a range of treatments to undo the harsh effects of summer, and just two of these are highlighted below.
Chemical Peel: Replaces thickened and damaged skin with fresh, youthful cells, eliminating uneven pigmentation and skin discoloration.
Microdermabrasion: By rubbing fine crystals across the skin with a medically-calibrated wand, the rough outer layer is removed, and new skin stimulated.
Laser Skin Rejuvenation: A concentrated beam of light is used to gently exfoliate the skin’s sun-damaged outer layer.
5. Reclaim Your Youthful Shape
Becoming a mother can be one of the most rewarding experiences. However, pregnancy and breastfeeding can leave you with unwelcome reminders such as stomach flab and flattened breasts.
While diet and exercise can go a long way towards reclaiming your youthful appeal, a mommy makeover as a Valentine’s gift to yourself could be all you need to restore your youthful figure.
6. Get Back Those Perky Breasts
Full, perky breasts may be a distant memory of the days before gravity, weight loss, pregnancy, or breastfeeding changed things. To regain confidence in your appearance this Valentine’s Day, a breast lift could be exactly what you need.
7. Slim Your Jawline
Whether it’s the result of age or weight gain, a double chin can be one of the most frustrating facial flaws to have. Through a facelift, Dr. Mussat can tighten loose skin under your chin and neck area, lift those sagging jowls and restore a youthful appearance.
8. Tone and Tighten
Are you plagued by problem areas of flab that won’t go away? Regardless of how much you exercise and eat healthily, do you find that lean, sexy stomach continues to elude you?
Well, you might consider a tummy tuck, also known as abdominoplasty, which surgically removes excess skin and flesh from the abdomen and even repairs abdominal muscles damaged during pregnancy or weight gain.
9. Restore Those Smooth Contours
If you’ve lost a significant amount of weight either through diet, exercise, or bariatric surgery, you could now have excess skin in areas of the body where large amounts of fat used to be. Through one or more body contouring procedures, expertly performed by Dr. Mussat, you could be well on your way to having your body’s contours restored by Valentine’s Day.
10. Put Your Best Face Forward
Despite taking good care of yourself and trying to age gracefully, age-related changes in your face are still inevitable.
With facelift surgery, Dr. Mussat can tighten and lift the soft tissues of your face, tighten lax, excess skin and surgically reposition sagging facial tissue giving you a more youthful, rejuvenated look.
Regain Your Sexy, Youthful Look in Time for Valentine’s Day!
What better to get a self-confidence boost and bring some excitement back into your love life before Valentine’s Day than a visit to board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Florence Mussat in Chicago, IL?
Too look your absolute best before Valentine’s day, schedule a personal consultation or call (312) 751-9000 today!
Whether your skin is light-toned or dark, we all face challenges in maintaining a youthful look. With dark skin, wrinkles are typically less visible, but creases and folds become more apparent with age. Also, there may be undereye hollows and voids in the cheek areas. Horizontal lines may also appear across the forehead.
Non-surgical aesthetic treatments are becoming more and more popular when it comes to keeping us looking vibrant and young. Many men and women find that, whatever their skin tone, injectables, and dermal fillers are effective in resolving their cosmetic concerns. The approach for facial beauty is different for patients who have darker skin tones than those who have a lighter complexion. Board-certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Florence Mussat offers dermal fillers and injectables that help her patients retain facial beauty without surgery. Here are some excellent products for patients with darker skin tones.
Botox
Botox is a neuromodulator that is effective in reducing horizontal lines on the forehead and crow’s feet around the corners of the eyes. The product renders immobile the underlying muscles that trigger expressions, which causes these fine lines to diminish or disappear. These treatments also prevent the deepening of existing lines and can keep new wrinkles from forming. In fact, Botox has become the most popular aesthetic treatment worldwide and can enhance the appearances of women and men with darker skin tones who seek cosmetic improvement.
Dermal Fillers
To increase facial fullness and add volume, Dr. Mussat offers injectable dermal fillers. She provides a wide range of products in the Restylane and Juvederm lines of facial fillers to diminish folds and sagging skin. Each of these products will accomplish different results, and treatments are fully customized to best benefit each patient. For instance, patients who need help with sagging skin may best be served with a series of Restylane injections for excellent results. For those who have jowls beginning to emerge, Juvederm and Restylane offer solutions that will enhance the jawline. For marionette lines or nasolabial folds, Juvederm Vollure can smooth out the skin to create a more youthful texture. Precise placement of a number of different products can erase years from the face in a single session.
Making the Right Choice
When choosing a dermal filler or injectable for cosmetic correction, it’s crucial to understand that the benefits are temporary, and at some point, you may prefer a surgical procedure like an eyelid lift, brow lift, or facelift. But until that time comes, you can find satisfaction from additional injections once the results begin to wane. It’s important to find the right medical professional to help you understand your options and choose the best plan for you to achieve your cosmetic goals.
Why Dr. Mussat?
Because non-surgical cosmetic procedures are trending, many clinics and spas offer injectables and dermal fillers. However, there is no better medical professional when it comes to facial anatomy and optimal care than a board-certified plastic surgeon. Also, as a woman plastic surgeon, Dr. Mussat understands the concerns many women have about their appearance. Her vast experience and surgical skills combined with her commitment to the highest standards in patient care create incredibly positive experiences for her patients. If you want to implement an anti-aging regimen that keeps you looking young, call us today for a consultation.
Call 312.751.9000 or contact us today!
Over the last decade, dermal fillers have become a staple of medical skincare. These versatile injectable compounds can correct a wide range of cosmetic issues while also improving skin health. The secret to their effectiveness lies in their key ingredient: Hyaluronic acid (HA).
What is HA?
Hyaluronic acid is a safe, natural substance that’s found throughout the human body. Though the word “acid” suggests something caustic to most people, HA is inherently non-destructive. In fact, this carbohydrate polymer is one of the primary building blocks that make up our skin, cartilage, and other connective tissues. HA-based dermal fillers will not damage your skin or cause side-effects, and dermal filler treatments don’t require any downtime.
Understanding the Benefits of HA
When HA is injected into the skin, it stimulates the production of collagen, a protein that keeps the skin healthy, strong, and supple. This process is an important part of cellular repair; it combats environmental damage while working to improve skin texture and tone. HA gel can also literally “fill in” distracting blemishes and act as a facial contouring agent. Some of the primary benefits of HA-based dermal fillers are outlined below:
1. HA hydrates the skin.
HA is a humectant, meaning it has a powerful ability to pull in water molecules from the external environment. HA can hold up to 1000 times its own weight in water.
As new collagen is synthesized, the water molecules attracted by HA are locked into the skin, becoming resistant to evaporation. HA-based fillers are therefore an excellent long-term treatment for chronically chapped lips and areas of rough, scaly skin.
2. Dermal fillers treat and prevent the signs of skin aging.
After age 30, the rate at which the body produces collagen declines by about one percent per year. Over time, this causes the skin to become thinner and more fragile. By age 40, most people notice lines and creases starting to form because their skin has become more susceptible to damage and less able to repair itself. By stimulating the production of collagen, HA can reverse some of these unwanted changes and restore the skin’s tensile strength, making it more resistant to future wrinkling.
HA’s thick gel-like consistency also provides an immediate volume boost in treated areas. Dermal fillers can therefore fill in deep creases and pockets of loose skin created by age-related facial fat loss. Dermal fillers are frequently used to fill in hollows around the eyes and cheeks; they can also restore the fullness of the lips.
3. Dermal fillers can reshape the face without surgery.
The volume-building properties of dermal fillers can do more than just fill in wrinkles and hollows: Fillers can also temporarily reshape the cheeks, nose, lips, and chin. People who want to avoid the discomfort and downtime associated with surgery can elect to have a non-surgical rhinoplasty, chin augmentation, or cheek augmentation performed solely with injectable fillers.
Learn More About Dermal Fillers
If you’re ready to experience the many advantages of dermal fillers, Dr. Florence Mussat will be happy to help you select the right filler treatment to meet your needs. To learn more about dermal fillers, contact Dr. Mussat online or by phone at: 312-751-9000.
