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May 8, 2008 (San Diego) -- If your face looks younger than your years but your hands aren't keeping up, there's help.
If you've got the funds, plastic surgeons have a host of solutions to make your hands look young again -- or at least be a closer match to your face.
"The best place to guess someone's age is their hands," says Danny Vleggaar, MD, a physician at Clinique Vert Pre in Geneva, Switzerland, and part of a panel of plastic surgeons discussing new options for rejuvenating aging hands at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in San Diego.
Pigment changes, age spots, texture changes, loss of fat, contour changes, and prominent veins all contribute to make the hands look older, Vleggaar and his colleagues say.
To turn back the clock, plastic surgeons are offering topical treatments, lasers, and soft tissue fillers, the same ones that refresh the face.
Topical treatments include tretinoin, says Barry E. DiBernardo, MD, a plastic surgeon in Montclair, N.J., and another panel member. Chemical peels can also improve the appearance of the skin on the hands, he and others say.
Laser treatment can also improve the hand's appearance. "Feathering" the effect of the laser near the wrist can help prevent a "line of demarcation," says DiBernardo, who works as a consultant for filler and laser manufacturers.
Fillers approved for use in the face are being used to restore the lost volume in the hands that often accompanies aging.
DiBernardo mixes the filler Radiesse with lidocaine, an anesthetic, and injects it to help restore a more youthful contour. Once injected, he massages the hand to distribute the filler evenly.
"It will take one or two syringes [of filler] per hand if there is significant contour to improve," he says.
If patients are happy with the fillers, DiBernardo says he sometimes switches to autologous fat injections (fat collected from your own body) the next time if the patient agrees. The fat is typically longer lasting, he says.
Another filler, Sculptra, may last longer than other fillers, up to two or three years, says Vleggaar, who has presented studies about the filler at professional meetings and works as a consultant for Sculptra's manufacturer and other companies.
Another alternative is laser removal of unwanted hand veins, a technique favored by Roxanne Guy, MD, a plastic surgeon in Melbourne, Fla., and another speaker.
In her study of the technique, called laser ablation, she and a colleague performed the treatment on 28 women and 54 hands in all, reporting the results in Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. A laser is placed on the tip of a wire, which is threaded into the vein. As the wire is slowly pulled out, the laser energy heats the veins and damages the vessel wall's inner lining. Over the next few weeks, the vein dies.
The patients, aged 41 to 68, were followed for up to 31 months. "Patient satisfaction was high," Guy says. Post-procedure swelling, which was expected, usually resolved within two weeks, she says. On average, most patients had four veins per hand treated. One woman had a skin burn where the laser exited. Even so, all 28 said they were satisfied with the results, Guy says.