Earlobe lift; strange plastic surgery procedure

Believe it or not, the ears are one of those body parts that can instantly give away your age. But thanks to enterprising cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists, they’re now being plumped and padded just like the face. “Earlobes lose volume, just as your face loses volume as you get older,” says Dr. Hema Sundaram, a Washington, D.C., dermatologist and author of “Face Value: The Truth About Beauty and a Guilt-Free Guide to Finding It.” “You don’t want a situation where the face looks lifted and the earlobes still look like sad sacks.”


Sundaram says she regularly repairs earlobes damaged by heavy earrings or trauma (elongated holes, torn lobes, etc.), then adds volume and strength by injecting dermal fillers such as Restylane or Perlane. Lasers are also used to tighten sagging skin and elongated earlobes can also be nipped and tucked with a surgical procedure that removes a wedge of tissue. Cost for a nonsurgical lobe lift (using dermal fillers) is between $450 to $650 for both ears and the procedure lasts for 4 to 12 months -- or longer. “I’ve had some patients going strong for two to three years,” says Sundaram.

Cankle lipo; strange plastic surgery procedure

After countless cracks about Hillary Clinton’s calves and Gold’s Gym recent Cankle Awareness Campaign, it’s no surprise women are turning to cosmetic surgeons for help with a perceived new problem: chubby cankles. But is surgery to the delicate ankle area a good idea? Some plastic surgeons say liposuctioning the lower leg is definitely doable (a French cosmetic surgeon recently discussed his success with the technique at the annual meeting of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons).


But others point to severe pain, excessive post-surgery swelling and a lengthy recovery time as arguments against cankle lipo. “The ankle is a tough area,” says Dr. Joel Schlessinger, a board certified dermatologist from Omaha, Neb. “There’s not a lot of fat there but there are a lot of nerves and blood vessels and the lymphatics that allow fluid to drain are somewhat less available in that area. Trauma to them can lead to swelling which leads to a prolonged recovery.” As Schlessinger puts it, “There are so many other areas where tumescent liposuction performs brilliantly. But this isn’t one of them.”