Quick shot replacing nip, tuck

Demand for minimally invasive cosmetic procedures showed a three-digit increase over the last decade, with Botox leading the way for those seeking to look younger or better.

As of last month, would-be patients can consider a new product that uses their own collagen cells, which are multiplied in a lab to create an injectable substance that smoothes out facial features. Injections typically cost a fraction of surgery and require much less recuperation time.

Food and Drug Administration “It’s taking hold. People are doing (injections) a lot more frequently,” said John Bull, a plastic surgeon in Naperville. “People that are looking for a modest improvement with less down time and no scars typically want to have this done. The best candidates are people with early signs of aging and volume loss.”

Laurette Agee, 51, who is general manager of a McDonald’s in Aurora, was a patient of Bull’s. More than four years after losing her husband of 26 years, Agee was ready to come out of her shell but noticed the aging process taking hold.

She did not warm to the idea of plastic surgery, so starting in February she began receiving different types of injections in her cheeks, lips and along the sides of her nostrils.

“I catch men looking at me now in a different perspective. It makes me feel very good,” Agee said. “At my son’s wrestling meets, other moms were like, ‘Did you have something done, Laurette? You look so good.’ I have no shame in saying, ‘I did this, and this, and this.'”

In the last decade, minimally invasive procedures have skyrocketed in popularity, from 5.5 million performed in 2000 to 11.6 million in 2010 — a 110 percent increase, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The best-known and most commonly used, Botox, jumped 584 percent.

Cosmetic surgical procedures were done 18 percent less often in 2010 than in 2000, with considerably larger drops in facelifts (65 percent), forehead lifts (57 percent), eyelid surgery (36 percent), chin augmentation (55 percent) and nose reshaping (35 percent), the society reports.

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Source:  By Ed Finkel, Special to the Tribune July 20, 2011 at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-x-0720-liquid-facelift-20110720,0,4306976.story