As a follow up to my previous post on the E! show, Botched, and my review of episode 7, I’m going to provide further insight into the issues in the season finale that they couldn’t touch on due to time constraints. I’ll point out potential alternative treatments and highlight some of the psychology with these complex patients. So here goes…Botched, season 1, season finale!
Pixie Ears
Monique had sex reassignment surgery after she turned 22. She actually looked very good early on, after her reassignment but one surgery after another, after another, after another, and then 200 procedures later, she looks very strange. Her breasts are enormous, she has tons of silicone throughout her body and very enlarged lips. But of all the things she’s had done, the thing she wants corrected by the Botched doctors are her pixie ears and a tummy tuck.
Pixie ears are when you don’t have free, mobile earlobes, but rather the earlobes are non-existent and the ear goes directly into the lower face. So in a combination procedure, she received a tummy tuck and recreation of her earlobes. During surgery, it was clear that none of the operative sites were “virgin.”
She had a great deal of silicone in the abdomen during the tummy tuck and she had a lot of scar tissue around her ears from previous facelifts. By doing another facelift and reducing the tension around her pixie ears, they were able to create new earlobes. It looked great at the end of surgery but it’s very possible that as the face descends over time, the pixie ears may return. Very difficult problem to fix so the best thing to do is to avoid getting pixie ears in the first place!
Cleft Palate
Kelly had a cleft lip and palate repaired as a child and at age 19, she had a nose job to correct her nostrils – a common problem for patients with a cleft lip and palate. The Botched doctors did a great job of preparing Kelly for the surgery so that she understood they couldn’t make her nose perfect, but could improve it.
In addition to trying to straighten the nose, they also found that the cartilage that separates her nostrils was crooked and they would try and straighten that as well. During a very complicated procedure, they corrected her upper lip by injecting fat from her abdomen and then performed an open rhinoplasty to straighten the nose and nostrils. Considering the complexity of the problem, her result looked great.
Bag Lady (Lower Eyelid Bags)
Myesha had filler injections to reduce the bags under her eyes…but she had it in Mexico. I’ve heard of patients getting surgery in Mexico to save money but getting filler in Mexico seems unnecessary because fillers are affordable even here in the US. Well, things didn’t turn out the way she expected. She had a lot of inflammation and swelling afterwards. Now she wants the Botched doctors to fix her lower lid bags.
Rather than doing an FDA-approved filler, they did what she needed in the first place – surgery to remove the fat under her eyes. Filler can be used to reduce dark circles or deep creases under the eyes but excess fat can only be treated with surgery. The good news is that surgery can be done from the inside of the lower eyelid so there’s no need for an incision on the lower eyelid skin. It’s a fairly straightforward, outpatient surgery. You can see an example of this procedure from one of my patients here. This is a very fulfilling procedure for both the patient and doctor.
