Plastic Surgery Blog

Glass of Water Emptying:  The Way I Explain the Aging of the Face When people ask me whether fat grafting is permanent, I say yes and no.  Yes, it is permanent because if done well by an expert injector (which I consider myself one) then once the graft gains formal blood supply over a period […]

Breaking down the Cheek into Aesthetic Subunits: Avoiding Chipmunk Cheeks There is nothing uglier than big, chipmunk cheeks other than perhaps a devil looking arched brow or a duck-like lip.  How do you avoid this problem?  Should one not fill the cheeks at all then?  The answer is no since the cheek is one of […]

Type 1 and Type 2 Eyelids One of my colleagues came up with the distinction between two types of youthful eyelids.  Type 1 is a very full upper eyelid that hangs almost over the eyeball itself (not quite).  Type 2 eyelid is an eyelid that is much hollower but at the same time still distinguishes […]

When Do I Do an Upper-Eyelid Blepharoplasty and How? But should we always just add fillers or fat to the upper frame of the eyelid and never remove any tissues?  The answer is no.  If the eyelid skin is above the eyelash margin, I rarely if ever remove skin.  Filling fat or fillers into the […]

When Do I Do a Lower-Eyelid Blepharoplasty and How? Like the upper eyelid, I find myself performing many more fat transfers to correct the aging process than traditional eyelid surgery.  Further, if I perform a traditional lower-eyelid procedure I will almost always use some fat transferred to improve the result.  In fact, I look at […]

Recently, I had a lady who at the age of 57 started modeling for the first time in her life thanks in large part to the syringes I have put into her face to make her look better.  Her new boyfriend remarked that she looked better than she had when he saw her 7 years […]

Correcting Fat Loss in IPL Damage: My Thoughts Unfortunately, I have heard a lot on the Internet about facial fat loss following a laser treatment like intense pulsed light therapy, or IPL.  Fortunately, I have never seen a patient of mine with this outcome.  I think partly because this phenomenon is rare and partly because […]

Recovery and Cost of Fillers vs. Fat Grafting I would like to focus on two specific pros and cons with fillers and fat transfer: cost and recovery. In the younger patient (under 35 years of age), fillers typically are the most affordable way to make a face look more youthful. The reason for this is […]

In my effort to find the best filler experience for an individual, I am constantly evolving my injection filler methods and the preferred products that I use to accomplish those goals.  In the past, I was a big advocate of Restylane injectable fillers but of late have found a real passion for Juvederm Ultra Procedures.  Is Juvederm great […]

Top 10 Things People Worry about After a Fat Transfer (During the Recovery Period) When I call one of my patients the night following a fat transfer procedure, I usually mention the top few things that can make them alarmed that will resolve over the period of the next couple of weeks.  Here is that […]

The Outer Face:  Converting Double Concavities into Convexities The one thing that I cannot stand is seeing a face that appears disjointed, i.e., part of the face has been over augmented relative to another.  Perhaps the two biggest problem areas that I see are the lips and the cheeks.  In fact, I have come up […]

Cannulas for Facial Fillers: The Evolution of My Technique Although I would estimate that only 1% of injectors currently use cannulas rather than standard needles to perform facial fillers, I truly believe that they have become the standard of care in my practice and I would hope the industry soon. I have been using cannulas […]

Cosmetic Facial Enhancement:  A Mechanic vs. an Artist I had a lady come to my office a few months ago who said that she went somewhere else for a facial fat transfer because it was a couple of thousand dollars less than what I charged.  She then came to me to touch up the work […]

Fat Grafting:  A Little Everywhere Good taste with clothing means that the items one wears are in harmony, possess style, cut well, and made of good material.  Good cosmetic facial surgery is very similar.  The products (materials) one uses can determine the outcome and certain fillers, e.g., fat, Restylane, and Juvederm, work better in certain […]

Hollywood’s Pillow Face is a Problem As many of you know, I love facial volumization in which lost soft tissue of the face from aging is restored using fat grafting and/or injectable fillers.  The word that has dominated the media is a “pillow face” to describe this facial fullness.  I am very adverse to this […]

Saving A Friend:  When Maybe You Should Tell Someone You Had Plastic Surgery I had a patient of mine in whom I had done facial fillers and Botox treatments over a period of two years.  In a word, she looked fabulous.  At 47 years of age she looked like she was in her mid-30s.  One […]

Fill vs. Lift in Facial Cosmetic Enhancement This article is a corollary to my other article called the “Two-Finger Rule”. In the article on the “Two-Finger Rule”, I argued that taking two fingers and gently pulling up on the skin would not be achievable with any type of cosmetic procedure since it cannot be exactly […]

Downturned Corners of the Mouth:  How To Fix Them One of the banes of women’s existence is the downturned corners of the mouth. Whether they are mildly present or severe, almost every woman regardless of age is overly focused on them to their own detriment. I often think that the reason for this is that […]

Why I don’t use Sculptra First, let me say that I truly do not believe Sculptra is a bad product. In fact, I have many trusted colleagues who use it and use it well.  However, I have used it in the past but I do not anymore for several reasons.  The motivation behind this blog […]

Mastery Is An Asymptote:  My Plastic Surgery Journey I am constantly refining my work so that you have a better and better result every time you see me. An example is I started to use microcannulas for facial fillers in November 2010. Since that time I have advanced in my skills with my cannulas to […]

Joan Rivers Plastic Surgery: From Overlifted to Overfilled Joan Rivers has been the poster child of bad plastic surgery for quite some time now.  She was one of the most overlifted individuals that anyone has ever witnessed, but I believe that she may have gone overboard in the other direction, which is overfilling. The LA […]

Dr Samuel Lam Featured In NewBeauty Magazine National Glossy Magazine Heralded As The Ultimate Cosmetic Enhancement Guide. Samuel M. Lam, MD, FACS, is featured in the Winter/Spring 2012 edition of NewBeauty magazine, which is due on newsstands in January 2012. The featured article discusses some of Dr Lam’s facial rejuvenation procedures and techniques that minimize […]

How I use Permanent Facial Fillers: Fat Transfer, Silicone, Bellafill(Artefill) In my clinical practice I use both temporary and permanent facial fillers depending on a mixture of budget, desires, and safety. Although permanent fillers carry the risk that they are indeed permanent, I believe that it is important to delineate safety guidelines and also to […]

Runner’s Face News Story Featured on 33 News Tonight I was featured on 33 News tonight at 9 pm on a segment entitled “Runner’s Face” for those hyper athletic individuals who prematurely age due to volume loss.  Melinda Arai goes through multiple syringes of fillers to help plump her face back naturally into a more […]

Leveraging the Hardness of Products in Cosmetic Injectable Fillers How hard an injectable product is can be a very good thing or a not so good thing. In any case, I try to use products based on its hardness factors for differing effects on the face. One of the softest materials that I use is […]

Use of Microcannulas: A Revolution in My Practice Using Fillers Many of my patients who have been with me for many years have witnessed the revolution in techniques that I have developed for injectable fillers.  Early on I started with rudimentary needle injections.  I then progressed to larger cannulas that I adapted from fat grafting […]

The Liquid Facelift Debunked A term that has become the bane of my existence is the “liquid facelift” due to a recent appearance on Dr. Oz that has caused quite a media stir.  Although I perform a huge volume of facial fillers and fat grafting in my practice, it is not the same meaning of […]

Suzanne Somer’s Facial Injections:  Oh My God! Recently, I performed a fat transfer on a lady from Houston who showed me a photograph of Suzanne Somer’s during our preoperative visit the day before the procedure.  She had already sent me an email terribly worried about the procedure, asking whether I would make her look like […]

Fillers Versus Fat: Shifting Sand Concept Many of my patients try to weigh the merits of fat grafting versus fillers since they both seem to be equally beneficial to fill in the hollows of an aging face.  However, I would disagree.  For younger faces still replete with enough fat and in whom I worry about […]

Understanding the Aging Process Using Fat Grafting:  A Glass of Water Emptying The face undergoes significantly less gravitational descent than was once thought.  Although everyone oftentimes takes two fingers to lift up what appears to be sagging, this maneuver does not truly represent what can be accomplished with a lifting procedure nor does it reflect […]

New fillers are coming out in the coming months to year. At this time with early reports about Evolence, I am not thrilled to use it. I listened to a lecture last year in St. Louis about the product. It is made in Israel and it is from pig collagen. The physician reported that it […]

Salud & Estetica en Colombia Interview in Espanol and English: