Plastic surgery abroad - Latvia

Knowledge of relevant plastic surgery complications and sequences is essential for the patient to make an informed decision and reduce the incidence of such complications. Plastics surgeons from Villa Medica clinics analyzed range of complications found in different clinics worldwide and presented overview in series of articles. This article is about bad facelift.
A facelift, technically known as a rhytidectomy (literally, surgical removal of wrinkles), is a type of cosmetic surgery procedure involving the removal of excess facial skin, with or without the tightening of underlying tissues, and the redraping of the skin on the patient's face and neck.

The most common complication can be bleeding which usually requires a return to the operating room. Less common, but potentially serious, complications may include damage to the facial nerves and necrosis of the skin flaps, or infection.
However, there are not complications which can make facelift really bad, because the most important in this plastic surgery operation is precision.
Among mistakes made by surgeon we can list the following:
- he can tighten the sides of the face, for example, with a slice along the front of the ear and into the hair, a yank of the loose skin and stitches to give a patient a hairline that sits back on the head like a orient woman.
- he can make incisions along the front of the ear that stand out like chalk lines on people with ruddy complexions;
- he can lift just the delicate top layer of skin, rather than the more resilient muscle tissue beneath it, flattening the cheeks; he also can lift both layers but carelessly reattach them.
- he can make a cut in front of the ears, undermine the skin, grab the deep sheet, pull to the ear, pull to the ear and it will look like a hole.

The illustrations of the above mentioned mistakes can be found below.

The skin around patient’s neck was pulled so tight that she could not turn her head for several months. Two years later, desperate to reverse this 'panda effect', the patient decided to undergo further treatment with the same surgeon to make the rest of her face match the white part. But instead of lightening the skin on the rest of her face, the treatment turned it brown. 'I was absolutely destroyed. I just couldn't believe a different set of circumstances was happening to me,' she said.

On this picture you see her nose looks shaved down and her forehead yanked up. Her eyes look entirely different and the skin on her face is smoother. Her eyes and brow area may just look different because she’s raising them as if she’s surprised.

This is example of “plastic face". In her mid thirties, patient should have some natural lines on face. Instead, she looks fat cheeked and surprised.

Cheeks of this patient look larger and brow seems much tighter. The larger cheeks do not work, because her eyes are naturally too small.