Cosmetic Surgery Videos

Hi, my name is Ricardo Rodriguez and I am the Medical Director of CosmeticSurg.net. I trained at Yale and I was teaching there for a while, but now I have been in private practice for 20 years.

Today we're going to talk about the liquid facelift.

We have a variety of technologies, some that are fillers, some that work on the muscle to help them get what they want.

For example, these wrinkles here are caused by contraction of a muscle called the frontalis muscle. So for those, Botox is good. it stops that muscle from acting and injecting those areas with Botox will smooth out the wrinkles and let the brow fall to it's more natural place.

Now, there's been a lot of talk lately of doing Botox in the lips, and in these areas, but I don't like that as much because it tends to leave your mouth not moving too much. and that can look a little bit strange.

Whatever you do with Botox, make sure you don't hit too many areas at once; otherwise, your face will stop many of the motions that give you good facial expressions.

For other areas - such as the hollows that can happen with aging underneath the eyes, this area here that's called the nasolabial fold that tends to get hollowed out, he areas down here called the marionette lines - those are better treated with fillers.

What you want to do is, you want to create a sensation of volume in there. And it's amazing how sometimes, by just filling up a little volume, for example in here, by creating a whole unit - a visual unit - between the cheek and the lip, you can take years off of the face.

And it's not just a matter of filling in the line, it's rather filling the whole volume so that you get a smooth transition from lip to cheek.

Again, I tend to prefer, at times, a more widespread volume like Sculptra because it gives a whole unit of correction, rather than things that just tend to prop up a line like Restylane or Juvederm.

However, Restylane and Juvederm do have their place and are very effective at getting that quick lift, especially in the lips. The fillers do a great job in bringing the lip just a little bit forward without giving you that excessive pout look.