What happens when someone drops a lot of weight? Someone else might get a real "lift." There's a revolutionary new material to help you erase time, and you may be surprised where it comes from.
Lisa DaRos is approaching the big 5-0 and wants to slow the march of time, "Some women wait a long time to have a procedure done and it's a very drastic result."
Wanting a more natural transition, she's decided to go under the knife for a new and unique type of facelift. "It's basically a short scar facelift and I'm using a new material called BellaDerm in the procedure to help increase and strengthen my results," says Dr. Sharon Dechiara.
BellaDerm is a flexible implant that surgeons can use to lift cheeks, plump lips, smooth out wrinkles, and improve defects. "I can contour it anyway that i like to. It's not rigid. It's just like your own tissue in your body," says Dr. Dechiara.
Maybe that's because BelladDrm is made of human skin that comes from living donors. "They are people who have benefited from the advances in plastic surgery," says Dr. Philip Bonanno.
Namely, patients who've had bariatric surgery, lost an extreme amount of weight, and then had their sagging skin surgically removed. "Body contouring surgery, which is really quite prevalent today, results in all of this excess skin," says Dr. Bonanno.
If patients choose, they can donate the left over skin to the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, where it's carefully prepared for grafting. The final product is a dermal matrix that works like a scaffold for new skin. "It has a lot of openings and a lot of pores so there's ingrowth of the patients own tissue into this material," says Dr. Dechiara.
Plastic surgeons typically rely on synthetic implants or tissue from animals like pigs. But she says, doctors say human skin gives better results, "I just think it looks much more natural and that's what everybody wants after having surgery. Something that looks much more natural. And I think it helps preserve your results for a much longer time period."
Over time the patient's cells take over the matrix and the implant becomes the patient's own tissue. Fillers that are injected into the skin break down after about six months.
For more information, check www.belladerm.org
