Botox Patient » Liposuction

California tightens plastic surgery law

Botox Patient — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:50:54 +0000

(UPI) — A new California law will prevent doctors from performing elective cosmetic surgery without an “appropriate” physical exam, authorities said.

The law, which takes effect Friday, is named the “Donda West Law” after singer Kanye West’s mother, who died a day after cosmetic surgery in 2007.

The law requires “an appropriate physical examination within 30 days of a procedure and “written clearance” from a doctor, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant before cosmetic surgery is performed, The Sacramento Bee reported Saturday.

The law will change little since reputable cosmetic surgeons have always obtained a patient’s medical history and made sure the patient had a physical exam before a procedure, said Dr. Terry Zimmerman, head of the Greater Sacramento Plastic Surgical Society.

Autopsy results showed Donda West died of pre-existing coronary artery disease and “multiple post-operative factors” a day after she had an abdominal tuck, breast surgery and liposuction. The surgeon who operated on West surrendered his medical license in April.

California tightens plastic surgery law is a post from: Botox Patient

Botox Patient: What REALLY killed the Beauty Queen?

Botox Patient — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:52:44 +0000

New info surfaces about former beauty queen Solange Magnano’s death….

(CNN) — When Argentine beauty queen Solange Magnano approached Dr. Guillermo Blugerman in 2004 about helping her achieve a flatter stomach, the plastic surgeon says, he obliged with liposuction. But when she returned five years later requesting silicone injections for a higher, firmer rear end, he turned her away.

“I said this was not allowed to be done in Argentina,” Blugerman said on the telephone from his Buenos Aires office.

Blugerman, the president of the Argentina Association of Medicine and Cosmetic Surgery said he believes Magnano then went in search of someone who would give her the injections she wanted.

“She found someone else to do this with this forbidden material,” he said.

The former Miss Argentina died November 29, reportedly of a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot that blocks blood supply to the lungs. Embolisms are known complications of silicone injections though they can occur — rarely — after any surgery. It’s still not clear Miss Argentina was given a silicone injection, which is not an approved procedure for “butt lifts” in Argentina or the United States.

Read more about Solange Magnano’s death

Botox Patient: What REALLY killed the Beauty Queen? is a post from: Botox Patient

Blue Collar Botox

Botox Patient — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:12:26 +0000

Via Tyler Cowen, it turns out that the proposed tax on cosmetic surgeries (like Botox) might be highly regressive:

… look around. See that cosmetic surgeon down the street? The walk-in Botox clinic next door? That’s because cosmetic surgery spread from the rich and famous to the rest of us because of increasing access to credit. That’s right- the deregulation of banking that happened in the 1980s meant more and more Americans were taking out credit- either on credit cards or with medical credit companies like GE’s “CareCredit.”

What this means is that cosmetic surgery is now primarily consumed not by the rich, but by the working and lower-middle classes, sometimes even by the poor. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), about 1/3 of cosmetic surgery is consumed by people who make less than $30,000 a year. About 70% of it is consumed by people who make less than $60,000 a year. It is mostly women (90%) and mostly white, middle-aged women (80% and between 35-55 years old).

It would be interesting to know if these trends vary depending on the procedure. I would suspect, for instance, that nose jobs and facelifts are common among the affluent and highly-educated, whereas breast implants, which still carry something of a class-based stigma, are a more heavily downscale phenomenon. And I would imagine there are interesting regional variations as well. (Perhaps some of these questions are addressed in the forthcoming book from the author of the post quoted above.)

Riffing on the data, Tyler writes that “cosmetic surgery is not just a zero-sum game but rather it leads to better matches, more matches, and more people who are happy with their looks or with the looks of their partner(s).” I would go halfway with him, and say that it’s certainly a rational response to a culture where airbrushed images of perfect beauty flood the airwaves and supermarket aisles, where male instincts about sex are increasingly influenced by the siliconed imagery of hard-core pornography, and where high divorce rates (which are especially high among the working class) ensure that large numbers of women find themselves re-entering the dating pool in middle age. Whether it’s something to be welcomed, though, is another question entirely.

Question: Should Botox, Restylane, Juvederm, liposuction and cosmetic surgery be taxed like you luxury car?

Blue Collar Botox is a post from: Botox Patient