Description
The most important factor in skin rejuvenation treatments is achieving a natural look. Dr. Patricia Berbari discusses her careful approach to care when treating patients for facial skin procedures. She talks about the different treatments that they offer as part of their overall skin rejuvenation plan.
View transcript
More and more people want to get rid of wrinkles on their face. First, we need an assessment of what the patient doesn't like in his face, or on her face.
And basically we look at three things. We look at the skin texture, we look at the wrinkles, and we look at the loss of volume. We have to assess the quality of the skin. We have to see if we have small wrinkles, we have age spots, sun spots, any sun damage. We look also look at the small veins, the red veins on the face, rosacea, and this is for the surface of the skin.
Then we have to look for the wrinkles of expression, like the frown lines, and the lines that we call the crow's feet at the sides of the eyes. And we also look at the loss of volume. I always go for a natural look. I don't like to give a frozen look to my patients. So I tell them if you want to use Botox we will go with the minimum amount of Botox, You come back in two weeks because it takes approximately seven to 10 days to make its effect, and in two weeks we can always add more.
What I don't want to do is change the face of the patient. I want the patient to have a rested look, but I don't want the patient to look 20 years younger. I want to the patient to look nice for his age or her age.
There are some exceptions, but I always advise the patient to go with a natural look.
And finally for the loss of volume, then we have a lot of treatments. We can start with fillers, collagen, or hydrogranic acids that are offered at the clinic, and I'm the one doing the injections. It's very important to have a physician do this, and especially if the physician is a surgeon. We know the anatomy. We do facelifts so we know how to correct some defects in the face.
Some patients don't want to come every year to have the treatment, So I offer also fat injections, and I call this lipo-sculpture. So this is harvesting fat from a part of your body and injecting it in the cheeks, around the mouth, and the temple area, all over the face. And this gives a very natural soft look.
With a combination of the CO2 laser to resurface the skin, the fat injections or the fillers, and some muscle relaxant for unwanted wrinkles of expression, the patient can go out happy with a rested look and doesn't need a major surgical procedure.