No, at age 7, she is not too young for an otoplasty. In fact, more recent research that has been performed actually have condoned otoplasty all the way down to age 2, but I personally tend to recommend age 5 as a starting point for an otoplasty procedure in children. Certainly, at age 7, she is an excellent candidate for otoplasty. At her age, this procedure is typically done under general anesthesia in an operating room. At Campbell Facial Plastic Surgery, we have our own private operating suites and a fully accredited surgical center so that the fear of a hospital setting is completely eliminated. The recovery involves leaving a bandage around the ears overnight that I allow the parents to remove the following day. I then recommend that the child wear a tennis-type headband that will cover the upper third of the ears for the first month after the procedure, just to prevent any accidental injury while sleeping. The headband does not need to be worn during the day and, overall, the improved appearance of the ears is noted immediately, and the results should last a lifetime.

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No, it is not too late to have a crooked nose fixed, even a year after the injury. However, the treatment to straighten it is different than it would have been had you had the nose straightened within the first 2 weeks of the actual basketball injury. Regarding the health insurance, it really is dependant on your actual policy but, most times, these types of procedures can be performed through your health insurance due to the fact that it is secondary to a traumatic event. I will mention that the far majority of times when a nasal procedure is required for mainly aesthetic reasons, that all areas of the nose need to be addressed so that appropriate harmony is achieved and yet insurance, in your instance, will only pay for what is called an open reduction of a nasal fracture, which would involve making cuts in the bone to move the bones back into their normal anatomic location. This would straighten the nose but it would not necessarily improve the aesthetic appearance of your nose other than the fact that it will be straighter. I therefore recommend an evaluation by a board-certified facial plastic surgeon so that your options can be discussed. In most patients, I will perform some computer-generated imaging so that we can analyze the nose from all different angles and customize a treatment plan so that you get the result that you desire.

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Yes, a facelift and a neck lift tend to go hand in hand and, for the most part, can be one and the same procedure. What I mean is that most procedures that are called facelifts improve the area of the neck, so it is a bit of a misnomer that a facelift only treats the face. There are specific procedures that can only treat the neck, and there are other procedures, such as browlifts and blepharoplasties, that treat other areas of the face but, all in all, the standard facelift treats the lower third of the face and the upper third of the neck or essentially the region under the chin. If you are having laxity that is low in the neck, I would recommend considering an extended SMAS deep plane facelift or similar procedure as, in my personal experience, I have found that the more advanced and technically demanding deep plane-style facelifts lead to an overall more significant lift that can then rejuvenate lower down on the neck. When standard facelift or SMAS-style facelifts are performed, I have seen recurrence of lower neck laxity very quickly after these less-advanced and less technical type of procedures. I would therefore recommend an evaluation by a board certified facial plastic surgeon who is able to perform various techniques of facelifting so that a customized treatment plan can be made regarding your specific anatomy and areas of concern.

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No, a minor allergy to shellfish will not affect your ability to get a lip augmentation, as I am not aware of any cross reactivity between shellfish allergy and hyaluronic acid products. Hyaluronic acid is what Juvederm and Restylane are made of, and these filler materials are excellent at rejuvenating and augmenting the lips due to their extremely smooth consistency, ease of injection, and ability to reverse should it become necessary. I would recommend that you seek out a rather experienced injector due to the fact that poor injection technique in the lips can lead to unfavorable visible outcomes where patients have the “duck lip” or “sausage lip” abnormality. This is an easily avoided complication from lip augmentation and, when lips are injected appropriately, you can get an extremely nice, natural-appearing augmented lip that all women want.

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The chin implants that are available in the United States at this time are all made of inert materials that the body really should not be able to “reject”. The most common reason that a chin implant would need to be removed is either due to the fact that it was not in a good position, the overall size was inappropriate and, least commonly, that there is an infection of the implant and the implant requires removal. I personally tend to use silicone chin implants as they tend to be flexible enough to mold to the surrounding bone, they come in a variety of sizes and even some custom-sized shapes that can improve jowling by adding a bit more volume in front of the jowl near the lateral wings of the actual chin implant. I would follow up with your surgeon regarding the tenderness of your chin and, hopefully, this is just continued healing and the tenderness hopefully will subside over the next few weeks, as it is very unlikely that your body would reject a chin implant, and it is also extremely uncommon to have any sort of an infection after a chin implant.

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