Medical fixes become more available, alluring
by SANDRA B. KELLY

Julie Graves at age 65 has better skin than she did when she was younger. 
“I’ve always wanted a nice complexion and that was not one of the things I had,” Graves said last month as she waited for her regular skin rejuvenation treatment at Lugenis Center for Aesthetic Medicine in Roanoke.
 
Graves, who now lives at Smith Mountain Lake, grew up on the island of Aruba and even after returning home to Buchanan was a committed sun worshipper for most of her life. Even so, the oil in her skin kept her from excessive wrinkling. But Graves said her skin was tough looking with large pores.
 
Not so any more. She gets regular microdermabrasion treatments followed by a chemical peel for her healthy looking smooth skin. Graves even kept up the skin treatments last year while she took chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer. The doctor treating her breast cancer approved, and Graves said her skin stayed healthy looking throughout the treatment. 
 
Graves said she has not had any surgical procedures done to reduce signs of aging. “But I’m not against them,” she said. “Whatever you do that makes you feel better about yourself – within reason – is appropriate to do.”
 
“I’m not ready to have material put in my lips,” Graves said.
Lips thin as people age. Just check out the thin upper lips of newscasters Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, said Dr. Lourdes Page, who runs the Lugenis center on U.S. 220 South in Clearbrook.
“We lose our lips as we age,” she said.
 
Page, an internist for 20 years, previously practiced in Boones Mill with her husband, Dr. Paul Page. She opened Lugenis as part of her own lifestyle change, which included spending more time with her three children and striving for a less intense existence. Page practices three days a week and has taken advantage of her clinic’s services for frown line and hair removal and permanent eyeliner.
 
She displays her “before and after” photographs in the office lobby. Botox injections have erased the deep lines that used to exist between her brows.
  
“I have never been so glad to get rid of anything,” she said. 
 
“Botox is fun. It’s one wrinkle eraser that can’t be beat and is applicable to most people,” Page said. She draws the line at holding botox parties, however, even though she gets requests for them.
 
Because cosmetic medicine isn’t life or death medicine, Page said she struggled with her move from a traditional medical practice into aesthetic medicine. The positive changes in her patients, 90 percent of whom are women, changed her attitude, she said.
 
Sandblasting skin to smooth it and remove heavy pigmentation, getting injections that plump lips or block squint lines, lifting sagging facial fat pads and eyelids, or erasing excessive, facial hair aren’t just for the privileged few or the stars anymore. 
 
Page operates a non-surgical clinic. She offers skin rejuvenation, laser treatments for varicose veins or tattoo removal, botox injections to erase lines and fat transfer injections for plumping lips. 
She is accessing new products for lip injections and reviewing treatments for cellulite, but said she will not bring any treatment into her practice until she is certain it is effective. 
Plastic surgeon Dr. Carole Wray said she also is conservative when deciding which procedures she will do. 
 
She said she and her colleague, Dr. Norman Harris, in Lewis-Gale Clinic’s plastic surgery department in Salem, expect to hear about new procedures at a fall national meeting of plastic surgeons. 
 
Cosmetic medical procedures are becoming more acceptable and the trend is toward easier, simpler ways to look and feel better, Wray said. 
 
Wray’s office offers permanent makeup, microdermabrasion for skin, botox injections and a full line of plastic surgery procedures, including mid-face lifts and full facelifts. 
 
She said breast augmentation and liposuction are popular with younger women. Tummy tucks are growing in general popularity as people become more weight conscious. 
 
Eyelid surgery is sought rather frequently and sometimes with older patients for more than cosmetic reasons, Wray said. Sometimes drooping lids are obstructing vision. 
 
“We’ve been told that body contouring will be the next big boom,” Wray said. 
 
Body contouring, which is generally sought by people who lose 100 pounds or more, can involve a breast lift, and thigh and tummy tuck, she said. 
 
“Aging starts to really show with the eyes when people are in their 40s. It progresses to neck and jowls in your 50s,” Wray said. 
 
Not everyone ages at the same pace and some people age faster simply because of how their faces are shaped. Someone with a pointed face will age faster as the cheek pads droop, Wray said. 
 
The one controllable aging cause is smoking, she said.
 
“Smoking will make your skin age faster and keep you from getting the best results from cosmetic surgery,” she said. “I won’t do certain procedures if the patient keeps smoking. Smokers have a seven-fold increase in problems from a facelift.”
 
Cosmetic surgical procedures range from the simple to the serious. Wray does upper eyelid surgery in her office with the patient under a local anesthetic. Breast reduction, often done to alleviate problems with back pain and posture, also qualifies as outpatient surgery because the patient is released within 23 hours. 
 
Extended facelifts can take seven to eight hours in an operating room and a hospital stay.
Prices range from $3,000 or so for eyelid lifting, $4,600 for breast augmentation and up to $6,000 for a tummy tuck. The cost for a facelift can range from $4,000 to $13,000 depending on what the patient has done.