Recovery

Quieting the Fear Factor

The two most common concerns as a patient considers aesthetic surgery are:

• What will I look like?
• How bad will my recovery be?

If Dr. Kornstein is your surgeon you can take comfort in the fact that he has taken care of both the journey and the destination.

During your consultation one of the pivotal points of discussion will be your tolerance for downtime and recovery. It would be safe to assume that none of us has extra time on our hands. New Yorkers particularly live hectic lives filled with more plans and responsibilities than can be reasonably handled in one 24 hour day. Who among us has time to “recover” from aesthetic surgery? And yet we make time for other “special events” in our calendar all the time. Reunions, weddings, holidays, vacations are all carefully planned. Taking care of ourselves must be a priority. This means if you are committed to cosmetic enhancement, you must also be willing to make a small investment in time that will surely pay long term dividends in both your appearance and psyche.

Dr. Kornstein’s global approach to aesthetics often translates into doing several procedures at once to optimize not only the rejuvenation but to take full advantage of a patient’s time away from work and family. His consultations include frank discussions about lifestyle issues with regard to downtime and overall safety. “I am a physician first and foremost. It is up to me to be sure that your recovery will not be burdensome either physically or psychologically. As a cosmetic surgeon I’m responsible for optimizing the aesthetics and anti aging capabilities of the areas to be addressed.” Dr. Kornstein draws the distinction between facial rejuvenation and breast/body enhancement. “Body procedures have the obvious advantage of being concealed as the final stages of healing are underway. This is not true for facial surgery.”

Depending upon your desires and restrictions there are a number of alternatives when considering facial surgery. The choice is ultimately yours, but knowing the tradeoffs will help you make the best decision for you.

• A less dramatic procedure is undertaken. An example may be a predominantly skin facelift with minimal attention given to deeper tissues. The advantage of this alternative is that skin lifts heal quickly. The disadvantage is the rejuvenation is often short lived because we are treating the outside envelope, not lifting what lies beneath.
• The aesthetic area is addressed in a more limited way. One example would be simply doing the eye area and leaving the remainder of the face unaddressed. Once again the advantage is a more rapid recovery because the body can handle one surgical intervention more easily than multiple surgeries. The disadvantage is that when you isolate rejuvenation, it makes adjacent facial areas look worse by comparison. Fat grafting in particular offers a profound demonstration. If we do facial fat grafting in the cheek area, years later the adipose derived stem cells the cheek age slowly if at all while the adjacent areas continue age at a normal rate. The features are out of alignment and aesthetic intervention is more obvious in the “improved” areas. From a psychological standpoint, some patients just cannot comfortably commit to a global approach, no matter how much they agree it is reasonable. In this case it is wise to scale back the intervention so they can put their toes in the proverbial water before jumping in.
• The facial rejuvenation is addressed as a unit and done at one time. What I generally recommend is to address the face or the particular body aesthetic in totality. When dealing with facial surgery return to work and social activities is of paramount importance. Patients who are already part of my practice understand that facial fat grafting dramatically slows the aging process and results in high patient satisfaction. However, recoveries were often long and distressing. Since the beginning of 2010, a breakthrough occurred when I began using a small radio frequency device which resembles a small halo. This device has been widely researched for many years. Its safety is not in question and has been used clinically for many years. It is used preoperatively for 48 hours and then post operatively for roughly 2 weeks. Used routinely for orthopedic conditions, the mechanism of action has been biochemically illustrated to accelerate the natural healing processes by putting influence on calcium on the body. I can now say that 90% of patients look good and are able to return to their lives within 2 weeks of surgery. Patients who have never had facial surgery comment on how quickly they perceive their swelling resolving. More importantly, those who have had prior facial surgery without this device, rave about their abbreviated recovery.