World War 1 brought about a new challenge for modern doctors as they had an incredible amount of disfigured soldiers that needed urgent care, and this horrible opportunity brought about new advances in plastic surgery. Prolific Harold Gillies emerged the father of the field between the years 1927 and 1920, Gillies and his team performed over eleven thousand procedures on more than eight thousand soldiers including revolutionary muscle and skin grafts.
The process of reconstructing or repairing parts of the body by the transfer of tissue either in the treatment of injury or for cosmetic reasons is known as plastic surgery. The first successful breast implant took place in Heidelberg in Germany in 1893. Breast augmentation remains the most popular and top cosmetic procedure since 2006.
The common materials used for plastic surgery are silicone, cortex, and medpor, but silicone is the most commonly used material for implants and has been used for plastic surgery for decades. The original use of liquid silicone was by the Japanese during the First World War. Hey used it to fill out the withered legs of polio victims.
What is silicone?
Silicone is a synthetic elastomer that has elastic characteristics. It is made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and silicon. Silicone is used for producing cooking utensils, silicone oil, silicone grease, sealants, and silicone resin. Silicone is considered to be chemically stable hence medical experts agree to its use for cosmetic and surgical implants to increase the size of body parts like breasts and butts for example.
Today, if a woman desires a temporary 24 hours breast increase, they can opt to have instabreast, which is the process of having solutions injected into the breast, which takes about 15-20 minutes and results in larger breasts that lasts for the whole day before the body finally absorbs the solution and urinates it out.
More than 90 percent of the plastic surgeries performed all over the world today are done by women. Plastic surgery is derived from the Greek word ‘plastics ‘which means to mold or give form to something. Plastic surgery is now a very common medical procedure practiced globally especially in countries like the United States and China.
Some example of plastic surgeries common to male and females includes:
- Chin augmentation (genioplasty) is the placement of an implant around a person’s chin to augment its size and shape.
- Liposuction (aka lipoplasty, body contouring): this is a surgical procedure that uses a suction technique to remove fat from specific areas of the body to shape those areas.
- Eyelid rejuvenation (blepharoplasty): is the upper or lower eyelid lift. It is designed to remove excess eyelid skin, muscle, and fatty tissue.
- A neck lift (platysmaplasty): is a cosmetic procedure that removes excess skin and fat from the neck to address age-related wrinkling in this area and provide a smoother and slimmer profile.
- Male breast reduction surgery (gynecomastia): this involves liposuction and surgical removal of fat and glandular tissue, in some cases, excess tissue and skin may also be removed. Men now account for 40 percent of all breast reduction surgery in the United States.
- A nose job (rhinoplasty) is a plastic surgery procedure for reconstructing the nose. Procedures include removal of a nasal hump, reshaping of the nose tip, seizing the nostril, increasing and decreasing the nose overall size and projection.
Advantages of plastic surgery
- It improves vision: blepharoplasty or eyelids surgery helps to correct drooping eyelids.
- It helps to reconstruct some disfigured part of the body and reduce parts of the body that have overgrown such as breast reduction surgery, skin cancer removal, tumor removal, laceration repair, and scar revision.
- It benefits weight loss patients, it helps them to reduce the liability of having heart diseases, diabetes, and stroke
- It improves physical health, relieves back pain by reducing large breast and helps to solve some skin problem
- It increases self-confidence in people by enabling them to look more physically attractive
- It reduces chances of heart condition by helping to reduce weight which reduced cholesterol in the body and prevents clogging in the arteries and as a result helps to prevent high blood pressure
Some common problems associated with plastic surgery include:
- Organ damage
- Silicone infection
- Nerve damage
- Organ damage
- Serious physical complication
- Financial issue
- Leakage from a larger blood vessel (hematoma)
- Blood loss during the surgical procedure
- Fluid buildup under the structure of the skin
Most procedures are done to the 40-45 years age group, many Americans suffer from plastic surgery addiction, and about two-thirds of all the patients are those who have had the procedure before. Many men who cannot grow a full beard have now opted to have facial hair implants.
