Maintaining A Youthful Face

April 22, 2021

Does your face not reflect the age that you feel inside? Dr. René Recinos, MercyOne North-Iowa board certified plastic & reconstructive surgeon discusses the variety of options patients have (both surgically & non surgically) to rejuvenate your face and start to look again how you feel.

Transcript of video:

René Recinos, MD (Plastics & Reconstructive Surgeon): 

To me, facial rejuvenation is just in the eye of the beholder. So, it’s not a procedure or procedures that a person absolutely has to have, but rather they’d like to have because they want to look or feel better. When a person approaches me about a cosmetic procedure on their face, the first question I ask them is what is it that bothers you about your face? It’s important for me to understand those motivations so that I can design the best plan to address the person’s concerns. My approach is not a cookie-cutter approach, my approach is based on the needs of my patients. So, I have a pretty wide toolbox that allows me to address those concerns. 

I have the capacity to do things from the least invasive, such as injectables, whether it’s Botox or soft tissue fillers, or skin treatments to make the skin more even in its color or texture. To more invasive things, procedures that require surgery, such as eyelid tightening, tightening of the face, like facelift, lifting of the eyebrows, those types of things. There are several things that I do to help my patients prepare themselves for whatever it is we’re going to be undergoing. I need to make sure my patients are well hydrated, that their health is optimized. A common question I ask is, do I operate on smokers? And the answer is I try not to. And so, for those people that do smoke, I ask that they stop smoking for a period of time because their risks of having problems are much higher. 

So, we address the patient-specific factors first, as we determine what our plan of action is going to be. Cosmetic surgical procedures when conducted appropriately are very safe. The likelihood of a misadventure or a complication is very, very low when things are conducted appropriately. So, it’s really important to minimize the risks as much as possible. That may mean as I mentioned, making sure patients are in tip top health, as for me as a surgeon, make sure that I understand the goals of the procedure and how I’m going to execute that plan. Also, it’s very important in terms of how we decide what we do. For me, it’s important not to extend my surgical time for more than six hours, because once a person is asleep or anesthetized for more than six hours, the risk of complications start to rise. 

So, one consider and a very important consideration for me is determining what I can accomplish in that six hour timeline. Now, not everything I do takes six hours, but many times people come to me with multiple concerns that may require multiple different procedures. So, length of time is one element that I take into consideration in order to try and make the procedure as safe as possible. What I would say is that I think it’s very important for a person considering cosmetic surgery to understand and know that level of training of the person that they’re seeking the surgical or treatment procedure from. Training is important, it matters. 

Physicians that have experience, that are well-trained tend to have less problems in terms of complications than those who aren’t. So, it’s incumbent upon patients, in other words, it’s important for them to understand what their provider has done and the type of training that they have received to allow them to perform these types of procedures. I’m a board-certified plastic surgeon, and that means that I was trained as a doctor first, a surgeon second, and a cosmetic surgeon last. I, as a plastic surgeon, have received extensive training on patients from birth until late in life. I’ve operated on people as young as a few days old to as over a 100 years of age. 

I have experience in all aspects of anatomy and surgery of the face, literally from the inside out. When I look at someone, I literally am seeing their muscles. I’m literally seeing their fat, areas of deposit, their skin, and everything. So, as I analyze someone’s face, those are the factors that I consider as in terms of determining what I think best addresses their concerns because not everyone that comes into the office is going to need the same thing. They may need different things in order to achieve whatever goal they want to achieve.