Nip/tuck nope.
One board-certified plastic surgeon is speaking out about the procedures he wouldn’t recommend, including a popular facial surgery that can cause premature aging and others that just carry too many risks.
“I don’t think that any of these procedures are going away since they’re all money makers for the types of providers that do them,” Dr. Sean McNally told The Post. “Make sure you do your research and vet your provider.”
So-called “liquid nose-jobs” are nonsurgical options for rhinoplasty that involve injecting fillers into the nose. They’re typically used to make small adjustments to symmetry, bumps or downturned tips, with the results lasting up to 18 months.
But McNally said the seemingly minor procedure can actually lead to serious complications — that are really tough to fix.
“Incidental injection into the tiny blood vessels of the nose can clog the blood vessels and kill the skin, known as necrosis,” he said.
“This is an extremely hard problem to reconstruct, and even in the best of hands, it’ll never quite look and function the same,” McNally added.
Wish you were born with blue eyes? That envy has turned some people to something called “keratopigmentation,” wherein pigments are injected into the eyes via laser.
But multiple experts have warned about just how risky this is, and McNally is among them.
“This procedure has one of the highest complication rates of all cosmetic surgeries and one of the possible complications is blindness,” he said. “I’d suggest just sticking with the colored contacts.”
Buccal fat removal — a procedure during which fat pads are removed from the cheeks to create a slimmer appearance and often accentuate cheekbones — became the hot procedure around 2021 and 2022, with Chrissy Teigen making headlines for openly admitting to getting it done.
But as celebrities started stepping out on the red carpet with carved-out faces, fans were not impressed — with some stars being accused of looking older and more gaunt.
“Removal of the buccal fat is typically completed to help thin out the lower face of patients,” said McNally, who is based in Portland, Oregon.
“While it can certainly accomplish this and has a good risk profile, it can also have the effect of prematurely aging people by decreasing the cheek volume or allowing the remaining volume of the cheek to shift down,” he added.
The doc isn’t a fan of either of these risky treatments which aim to target fat. Kybella, an injection, does so with deoxycholic acid, which breaks down the fat. CoolSculpting freezes the fat, causing it to die.
“I’d avoid Kybella since it doesn’t work as well as you’d hope, and you might as well put that money towards the liposuction you’ll probably end up wanting after having it done,” McNally said. “On top of that, the scar tissue from Kybella makes liposuction more difficult.”
He also doesn’t think CoolSculpting is as effective as people might want — and there are serious risks involved.
“Used improperly, it can kill the skin, and that in a small fraction of patients, it can actually cause fat to grow, known as paradoxical adipose hypertrophy,” he said.
Paradoxical adipose hypertrophy, as beauty lawyer Whitney Ray Di Bona previously said, can make fat “actually expand and grow into a tumor.”
That happened to supermodel Linda Evangelista, who says she was “brutally disfigured” and “permanently deformed” by it.
McNally is OK with both BBLs and brow lifts under the right conditions — but warns that that they’re risky, too.
“People talk about BBLs themselves being risky or dangerous because they are technically the most likely plastic surgery to end in your death,” he said.
“That said, we know that this surgery can be performed with an acceptable risk profile when volumes are more modest and the fat isn’t injected into the glute muscles — preferably done under ultrasound guidance to be sure,” he noted.
“I mean if I needed a more shapely butt, I’d get one. I’d also support my wife in getting one if that’s what she wanted,” he added.
As for brow lifts, he cautions that they should only be performed by an “extremely skilled surgeon” — otherwise they can “basically disappear over a year or lead to a surprised look.”
“I do feel that brow lifts can be good surgeries, but in the right hands. Just make sure you go to an experienced, board-certified provider with results you like,” he said.
A helpful red flag to look out for? “If you go to a place that only has one treatment option for your concern, they might suggest that option even if you’re not a great candidate for it.”
