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37

April15

V

erne Maree explores

two popular cosmet ic

procedures for treating

ageing skin

After five or six years of semi-regular “facial

injections” – one of the popular euphemisms for

Botox and other minimally invasive line-smoothing

treatments – I’m a firm fan of the genre. My job,

lucky me, keeps me in touch with new developments

and with all sorts of health and beauty professionals,

including DR WONG CHIN HO.

As a certified plastic surgeon, Dr Wong has an anti-

ageing armoury that offers everything from composite

facelift surgery, cosmetic rhinoplasty (or nose-job)

and breast augmentation, reduction or reconstruction,

through to the whole gamut of non- and minimally

invasive procedures, including injectables like Botox

and fillers. He can even give you a dimple!

Lift me up

For treating lines, Botox is best used on the upper face, says

Chin Ho: around the eyes and on the forehead. Personally, I’m

not so bothered about lines; what I like is the subtle brow lift

that Botox can create.

Lifting the brow with Botox really is an art, he agrees, and

different practitioners do it differently. Essentially, it involves

injecting and deactivating the brow depressor muscle or

orbicularis

oculi

, so allowing the brow elevator muscle at the top of the

forehead to do its job more effectively. He also injects in a line

down the middle of the forehead, which somehow “tricks the

brain”. The series of injections takes a couple of minutes and is

really quite bearable, especially if you gabble a bit to take your

mind off it.

Though he’s a fan of Botox, Dr Wong thinks that its ability to

lift the brow ability is somewhat oversold. For the bit of excess

skin on my upper eyelids, he would rather recommend surgery. To

make his point, he shows me three photos of one of his patients:

after one week, after two weeks and after three months. The

effect is remarkable, yet looks quite natural; definitely something

to think about.

Fill me in

Four or five years ago, a lovely doctor injected a little facial filler

to soften my naso-labial folds: the lines that run from the sides of

the nose to the corners of the lips and tend to deepen with age.

Told to expect the effect to last up to a year at most, I’m surprised

and pleased that the lines still haven’t come back.

I only wish that Botox would linger longer than a measly four

to six months. But I wonder: what if you

weren’t

happy with your

filler and it

didn’t

wear off as predicted? No problem, says Dr

Wong – it’s reversible. There’s an injectable “antidote” call Hylase

that swiftly dissolves hyaluronic acid fillers.

“The thinking about fillers has advanced a lot in recent years,”

he explains, “and that’s because we now understand that beauty

is not skin deep, but bone deep.”

It can help two distinct groups:

Firstly,

younger people

with a specific concern relating to a

weakness in their facial bone structure, such as eye bags or

sunken eyes; this can even be regarded as a form of congenital

premature ageing.

Secondly,

older people

with age-related deflation, sagging

and bone resorption, especially around the eyes and on the

cheekbones. For them, filler can be used not only to fill creases

and to lift sagging, but also to correct age-related skeletal

deficiencies.

“We now

understand

that beauty

is not skin

deep, but

bone deep”

– Dr Wong Chin Ho