Phantom cosmetic surgeries, everyone talks about them, but no one has seen them

Or yes, but you have to look for them and maybe we will find that there are models, celebrities or people very obsessed with their physique who have done them. But, of course, they are not operations demanded by cosmetic surgery patients and, in some cases, they are at the limit of what is healthy and safe.

This is the case of the marking of the silhouette, with special attention to the waist, by means of extraction of floating ribs. As explained by the plastic surgeon Moisés Martín Anaya This practice is not recommended by the majority of aesthetic professionals, as it is a procedure that is not without risks. Personally, he explains that he does not know any colleague who performs it and says that the only manipulation that is carried out on an aesthetic level in relation to the ribs is the extraction of a very small part of cartilage to help him in two facial surgeries.

The first is otoplasty, in which a small part of this material is extracted to work a microtia, which is nothing more than a small malformation, a tiny ear or the absence of an ear. Cartilage is also a donor material in nasal reconstruction, specifically in the area of ​​the back of the nose.

In both cases, the specialist says, a small piece of cartilage is removed. If we did the same with two ribs, we would eliminate the physical protection that these elements suppose for the organs they cover, especially for the lungs. This would increase the risk of pneumothorax and physiology would be sacrificed for aesthetics, a questionable decision for Martín Anaya.

In addition to the risks inherent in the extraction of these last two ribs, the patient who is interested in this surgery should know that it may take up to six months to recover, that the scar is not easy to hide and that postoperative pain it is also not easy to calm or make it disappear.

Of course, we are thinking about exercise and diet to avoid going under the knife, but if neither with one nor the other we manage to mark a waist or have a flat stomach, the surgical solution exists. It is liposculpture and does not need to remove bones, but fat. Much less invasive and with great results, it makes the extraction of floating ribs an extreme and rare solution.

It is also rare, on the other hand, for a patient to go to a cosmetic surgeon for reshape your belly button. Or just to reshape your belly button. This surgical technique is usually associated with abdominoplasty. In the distension of the abdominal muscles by the growth of the uterus, he explains Martin Anaya, there may be a change in the shape of the navel, which flattens or bulges.

The aesthetic problem comes when, after six months – the average recovery time of the abdomen after childbirth – the navel has not recovered its original shape. That is when it can be repositioned along with the muscles and tissues in the area.

They are also carried out umbilicoplasties within the correction of tissues that hang due to massive weight loss after bariatric surgery, that is, stomach reduction for people who are markedly overweight and obese.

In case a model or an actress wants to correct her belly button for not liking how it appears in the photographs, for example, she should know that the intervention is simple, that it does not last one hour and that, given the choice of navels à la carte , the canons of beauty refer us to an almond-shaped navel about thirteen centimeters above the pubis.

Not in the canons of beauty but in the fashions and eccentricities that from time to time are associated with aesthetics, procedures such as the so-called Fox Eyes. Fox eyes, also known as feline gaze, are nothing more than a marked tightening of the facial skin at eye level with tightening threads, so that they are very torn.

This oriental look is also achieved in the operating room. The technique is called cantopexia. With somewhat more natural results, it is also a rare sight of cosmetic surgery. Martín Anaya warns that canthopexy can change the expression of the gaze forever. You can work in this area, stretching the lower eyelid for functional reasons, when it is too lax, which can cause constant tearing.

Other less definitive touch-ups are those that are carried out every day in the blepharoplasty or eyelid correction surgery, which rejuvenates the look. In it, it is possible to give tension to the drooping eyelids due to fat or age and the angle of the eye opening is also modified, but with the aim of naturalness and harmony.

Another retouch that is sometimes referred to for its presence in the anatomy of some goddesses who have walked for Women Secret are dimples of venus, name by which those small indentations that some have naturally in the back are called.

It is not true, explains Martín Anaya, that it is normal to enter an operating room to have them done. They are achieved but it would be enough a deep liposuction in the area so that the sexy holes were marked.

Conclusion: cosmetic surgery has traditional, safe and effective resources for possible eccentric demands. Are there these demands? Of course, everyone talks about them, but, like ghosts, no one (or very few) have seen them.