Documentary of Plastic Surgeon Volunteer Treatment of Acid Burn Victims Wins Academy Award

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Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was born in Karachi Pakistan, emigrated to Toronto, Canada and this passed weekend won an academy award here in Los Angeles for her short documentary film Saving Face. The film documents the plight of Pakistani women who are disfigured by having acid poured on them usually by relatives, husbands or rejected suitors. The acid damages the skin, sometimes exposes the underlying bones and often times causes blindness in one or both eyes. The film chronicles the efforts of a Pakistani born British plastic surgeon, Mohammad Jawad,  to reconstruct their faces and restore their dignity. It is the first win for a Pakistani film. A win that instills pride and shame at the same time. Over 100 such attacks occur in Pakistan each year. Most go unreported and the women live secluded lives due to the circumstances surrounding these attacks (in the case of husband attackers they do so out of fear for their children) so the number of victims could even be double that. In the course of the film a girl describes being burned at age 13 for rejecting the advances of her teacher. In the Western world that teacher would have been prosecuted. Although it is rare a female Pakistani lawyer took up the legal case of one of the victims in the film and successfully managed to have the perpetrator convicted. Sadly these women require multiple operations to regain some resemblance of normal appearance. There is a report of a New Delhi India girl who underwent 25 reconstructive operations to treat disfiguring from acid burns.

Woman's Body Swallows Breast Implant

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A report from Johns Hopkins University in the December 2011 New England Journal of Medicine describes the swallowing of a breast implant into a woman's chest cavity. The patient had reconstruction of both breasts after mastectomy for breast cancer. She subsequently had minimally invasive heart surgery via the right mastectomy scar. Some time later while partaking in a Pilates class the right implant was swallowed by her body during a stretching exercise. The intact implant squeezed through a small hole between her ribs left from the heart surgery and ended up on top of her right diaphragm. It must have been scary to look down and see the implant disappear into her chest.

The implant was retrieved, the hole in the chest was closed with a mesh patch and the implant was put back in its original position. Now I assume she is back doing Pilates. This is one thing you don't see everyday.

Aaron Stone MD - Plastic Surgeon Los Angeles
Aaron Stone MD - twitter

Home Laser and Cosmetic Devices

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A Google search on "home laser" yielded 154,000,000 website links overseas and 48,000,000 when searched in the US. Most of the initial listings are for hair removal devices but there are also ones for treating acne and for facial rejuvenation and others treat skin conditions like psoriasis, vitiligo and dermatitis. Many of these home laser and light or ultrasonic devices can be purchased on the Internet. Sellers tout the benefits of these products in treating acne, age spots, large pores, wrinkles, sagging skin, puffy eyes, rosacea, cold sores, and many other skin conditions. However, few of the devices have been studied or approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Some of them sound sort of scary and could be a waste of money or at worst harmful. Sales of home cosmetic devices totaled $500 million last year, and are expected to nearly double to $950 million in 2015. Women have been removing hair from their legs for quite some time. Now it is a multibillion dollar per year industry.

Slap Your Way to Larger Breasts

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35 year old Bangkok, Thailand beautician Khemmika Na Songkhla also known as Khunying Tobnom claims to be able to enlarge your breasts without surgery—by slapping them. Her grandmother mocked her for wasting time rubbing her nipples with a miracle cream when she was in her early teens in hopes of sprouting big breasts. Her grandmother then advised her to rub them till they hurt and repeatedly push fat from her sides and abdomen towards her chest, and then douse the breasts with ice water. She claims that by following her grandmother's advice she boosted her breast size by 4inches and her confidence soared. Ms Khemmikka says that by using this non-surgical technique (squeezing, pinching and slapping fat and muscle on the upper chest, the sides of the torso, and the belly of clients with cream or gel for an hour over six 10-minute sessions for a total cost of $380) she has enlarged the breasts up to 4 inches in thousands of Thai women over the past 14 years without injections, chemicals or implants. After the treatment Khemmika instructs her customers in special exercise techniques and massage to keep their breasts in shape.

PIP Silicone Breast Implant Recall

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The French company Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP manufactured breast implants and supplied a large portion of the European breast implant market. The company was based in the south of France and for awhile was the number 3 breast implant producer in the world. 80% of production was exported out of France. While having undisclosed financial problems it began to cut costs by using a cheaper industrial grade silicone in the implants rather than medical grade silicone. This cut manufacturing costs by up to euro 1 million ($1.3 million) a year. A lawyer for the company told authorities that the switch to cheaper silicone began in 1991, shortly after the company began production. These implants were also marketed under the name M-implant by the company Rofil Medical in the Netherlands and distributed in Germany by the company Rofil Medro. Affected Rofil implants are designated as IMGHC-TX, MX-IMGHC, and IMGHC-LS.

Dynamic vs. Static Wrinkles

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This is a guest post by Stacie Morris, a writer for Botox Ottawa. Stacie’s primary concern? Wrinkles, of course! Her favourite treatment is a customized skincare regimen at home (which includes peptide-rich products) and Botox.

Did you know that there are two types of wrinkles on your face? You’ve got dynamic and static wrinkles.

Dynamic Wrinkles
Remember when you were younger, and your facial skin was pretty much smooth all over when you weren’t expressing any emotion at all? When your face was neutral, your skin had no trace of crease or line. But as soon as your facial muscles contracted to allow the conveying of an expression, like smiling and frowning, a wrinkle appeared. When your facial muscles contract, the skin overlying them stretches and creases to accommodate their movement.

Asthma - Reversible Lung Disease and Cosmetic Surgery

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Obstruction to airflow in the lungs can be due to

1. fixed or irreversible lung disease (COPD)
2. reversible (responsive to medications) obstruction due to heart failure
3. reversible (responsive to medications) obstruction due to asthma

The obstruction can be due to just one of the factors or any combination of 2 or more factors.

In asthma the walls of the breathing tubes into the lungs swell (become inflamed), muscles surrounding the tubes contract squeezing the tubes and then increased mucus secretions inside those tubes plugs them. This results in obstruction to airflow with audible wheezing and a tight feeling in the chest as the individual tries to get the air through narrowed plugged tubes. Attacks can be mild resolving quickly with medication or severe and life threatening.

Tips for Bikini Line Laser Hair Removal

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This is a guest post by Sachin from the Cosmos Clinic in Sydney Australia

Laser hair removal is a great way to get rid of hair on the bikini line, so follow these tips for the best results!

Are you tired of shaving your bikini line and seeing those red bumps and black spots? Does the idea of waxing down there seem way too painful to be worth it? Then you might want to look into Candela laser hair removal for your bikini line. Here are some general tips to choose a clinic, prepare for the removal and maintain the results.

Laser and Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) Safety

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Different wavelengths of light penetrate to different depths below the skin surface and are absorbed by different skin or tissue components. For example CO2 and Erbium laser light is absorbed by the water in cells exposed to it. Flahslamp laser light is absorbed by red blood cells. Nd:Yag laser light is absorbed by skin pigment cell melanin and tattoo pigment. Since the eyes contain water, pigment cells, red blood cells etc they can be damaged if exposed to most laser lights either directly or indirectly (from reflected laser light). Even the laser pointers used by lecturers can damage the eye if pointed directly into the eye. Some lasers such as the CO2 have a beam whose wavelength is not visible by the human eye but they can still cause damage to the eye. The CO2 and Erbium will damage the cornea and surface of the eyeball first. Flashlamp and vascular lasers are absorbed by red blood cells and are the most damaging to the eye as they are absorbed by and damage the retina.

What is Botox?

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This is a guest post by Sachin from the Cosmos Clinic in Sydney Australia

Botox here, botox there… it seems that all we hear about these days in the cosmetic surgery industry is botox. Hollywood stars use it, New York socialites swear by it… but what is it? If you’re like me, you don’t want to put something in your body if you don’t know what it’s made of. So I did a little research on botox and I want to share my findings with you.