January 3rd, 2012 — 8:03pm
Seattle Plastic Surgeon suffers from self inflicted post-surgical complication.
Can a Bandaid cause such misery? If you are allergic to the adhesive, yes it can.
I know all you readers are anxious to know how my surgery (surgery on me as opposed to by me) went on December 23rd. Well, the surgery went great as expected with the expert care of Seattle Hand Surgery’s Dr. Keck. It was a little foible on my part that has caused about 95% of my pain and suffering.
Being me, I just couldn’t not mess with my finger dressings after surgery so, of course, one of them fell off. In my post-anesthetic haze, I had a little lapse of judgement. I put a nice Band Aid on one of my fingers completely forgetting that I am allergic to certain types of Band Aids, like the one I just had put on my freshly operated finger.
Dr. Keck had injected my fingers with a long acting local anesthetic so I had no feeling in my operated fingers and thumb for about 12 hours. After the anesthetic wore off, one finger and my thumb were aching a little bit but the Band Aid finger was on fire and that is when I discovered my stupid error. The finger was all red and blistered and looked (and felt) like I had submerged it in a pot of boiling water.
So 11 days post-operatively, all is well (finally). The Band Aid finger’s blisters all peeled and I have nice new and very, very sensitive skin but am back to gardening, skiing, guitar and, later this week, operating.
The moral of this story is to tell your surgeon if you have any sensitivities to Band Aids, tape, soap, iodine, Latex or really anything your skin does not like. An allergy reaction to the dressing can be the worst part of the surgery. It was for me.
Thanks for reading! It’s great to be back at work! Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder
General Health, Hand surgery, It's all about me., patient beware, Patient Safety, Plastic surgery, Postoperative care, Seattle plastic surgery, Uncategorized
December 13th, 2011 — 10:33pm
Top shows the back of the hand before fat transfer. Bottom shows the back of the hand after fat transfer.
Seattle Plastic Surgeon just can’t keep her opinion about this poorly thought out procedure to herself.
I read several plastic surgery journals every month and more often than not I think, “Now there is a good idea”. But this month I read an article about using a “hand lift” for hand rejuvenation and I thought, “Now there is a really, really bad idea”.
A “hand lift” involves excising some of the loose skin at the level of the wrist and pulling the skin on the back of the hand tighter. Yikes! This not only leaves a significant scar on a very visible area of the wrist but also makes the skin too tight when making a fist. And it doesn’t help the quality of the skin itself.
The problem with the idea of a “hand lift” is that it does not address the real problems with aging of the hands.
So what was this plastic surgeon thinking when he thought up this operation????? My guess is that he did not know how to perform fat transfer to the hand which is a procedure that I think is really, really great. Fat transfer addresses some of the real problems with aging of the hands: deflation because of loss of fat and deterioration in skin quality.
With fat transfer to the hand, fat is harvested from the patient where there is a relative excess (usually the belly or the hips). The fat is purified and then injected into the back of the hand in teeny, tiny parcels. The fat does a couple of things. First of all, it plumps up the hand that has lost fat over the years and second, it really improves the quality of the skin. Just take a look at these close up photos. Not only are the veins less prominent after fat transfer, the fine lines are much, much smoother and the color of the skin is better. These changes are likely due to the stem cells that are in the fat. This change in skin quality is seen in other areas when fat is transferred to the layer just under the skin. This stem cell effect is a very, very hot topic and is being investigated by several large plastic surgery institutions.
Soooo, if you don’t like the way your aging hands look, don’t get a “hand lift” but consider fat transfer instead. There are no long scars and recovery is usually quite rapid and almost painless and the improvment is long lasting.
Thanks for reading! Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder
Aging Issues, fat injection, Hand surgery, New technology, Now that's a little weird, Now that's cool, Plastic surgery
