“He’s a God to me!” gushed Rodi, one of Dr. William Rosenblatt’s FOF patients, at a get-together at his New York office this week. Looking fantastic at 57, Rodi told the gathering of 15 women (and one man) that Dr. R performed a breast reduction on her and removed “three or four chins.” Delighted that she “hasn’t had to wear a bra in two years,” Rodi also is thrilled that her back “no longer hurts” from the heaviness of her breasts. As for some of the fat that Dr. R eliminated from her chin, he injected into her cheeks to give her face more fullness.
Billed as An Evening of Beauty on the email invitation from Dr. Rosenblatt’s office, the program featured a discussion of new plastic surgery trends, including an introduction to Xeomen, which the doctor calls a “new Botulism toxin.” Manufactured by Merz, the same company that brings us the filler, Radiesse, Xeomen, is “15 to 20 percent less expensive than Allergan’s Botox, but has the same effect, lasts the same amount of time, and is injected the same way,” Dr. R explained.
Although Xeomen has been around for a while, he told us, it couldn’t be introduced in the United States until some legal issues were resolved. Now Merz is charging doctors less so it can take market share from Allergan, a common tactic among drug companies.
Xeomen is used to paralyze muscles and get rid of the deep lines in the glabella region, the area on the forehead between our eyebrows, where lines develop from frowning repeatedly over the years. It’s often used also to eliminate crow’s feet around our eyes and “bunny lines,” which develop when we wrinkle our noses, Dr. R said. “I sometimes inject it to elevate the eyebrows slightly, but I don’t like to fully paralyze a forehead. It looks terrible when you can’t raise your eyebrows.”
While we sipped wine and enjoyed sushi and raw veggies with hummus, Dr, Rosenblatt covered other techniques and trends.
On Breast Implants
“Silicone breast implants, even on the rare occasions that they might break, don’t explode. They run trucks over these and they do fine, from what I understand. The silicone won’t pour out, even if the implant were to be cut. It would act more like silly putty and blub up.”
“Round silicone gels are the most popular in this country for elective cosmetic breast augmentations. Newer implants on the market, commonly known as ‘Gummy Bear’ implants, are hard, not soft like silicone. They work pretty well for breast reconstruction after mastectomy, but I don’t find that they work well for
routine cosmetic breast augmentations.”
On Breast Lifts
“A breast isn’t lifted only by an implant. To determine the sagginess of your breasts: Put a pencil or finger under the breast. If the nipple is below the line created by the pencil or finger, you need a surgical lift.”
“Just putting a really, really big implant into a sagging breast will create what’s called the ‘Snoopy deformity’: The breast is here and the implant is here,” said Dr. R, pointing to two different spots on his chest. “If you have very large breasts that sag, we do a small reduction and then lift them up. The bigger the breasts are, the more they’re going to sag. If you have smaller breasts, you can lift the skin and put in an implant at the same time.”
“Breasts are held up by just skin. They don’t have ligaments or muscles. They have nothing.”
“Different styles of implants are popular in different parts of the country: Slightly smaller implants in the Northeast. In the Southeast and California, they start where we leave off.”
On Liposuction
“Liposuction is designed for skinny people, in order to remove some lumps and bumps and a little excess fat. It’s not designed for overweight people. Diet is what works with them. The biggest liposuction we do is 12 pounds, which is a drop in the bucket for really heavy people.”
Following a brief Q&A period filled with laughs (another of the doctor’s patients, who had breast augmentation last year, said ‘they’re mine and they’re magnificent,’ recalling the famous line on Seinfeld,) Dr. Rosenblatt did live Botox and Radiesse demos.