Looking for a better "you"? Here's what others search.

RealSelf.com is an online community of people searching for answers to their questions about cosmetic surgery. Below is a list of  the top 10 subjects out of 52 million searches on RealSelf last year.

Obviously, each local geographic area has its own specific profile. But this list is roughly the same as what I see locally as a cosmetic surgeon in Fort Myers, Florida

1. Tummy tuck
2. Breast implants
3. Breast augmentations
4. Rhinoplasty
5. Brazilian Butt Lift
6. Botox
7. CoolSculpting
8. Breast reduction
9. Cellulaze
10. Liposuction

Conclusion? If you are considering any of the above procedures, you are in a large cohort of similar interest. 

Please contact me at 239-939-5422 and request a free, confidential, private consultation. There is no obligation. But I can guarantee that you will become wiser about your options.

How do you like your fat?

I guess when we go to a steak house, we’re always asked, “How do you want that done?”  

Now, with fat, I can go "dry" or "wet".  More and more of my Fort Myers plastic surgery patients receive fat when I’m doing facial cosmetic surgery.  It is a great tool to make a face more youthful because, as we age (I have been in practice 33 years and have yet to come across ANYONE who is NOT aging.) we not only get saggy skin, we lose VOLUME, i.e. fat in our face.  

We harvest fat from the abdomen for the majority.  When we harvest fat we usually infuse tumescent fluid into the donor area and then harvest.  In a recent study, NO difference was found in the arability of the fat if it was infused wet or dry.

AUTOLOGOUS CELLS RX NOW FDA APPROVED

Dr. Robert J. Brueck MD, board certified Fort Myers cosmetic surgeon, regularly posts messages here relating to health, skin and aesthetic surgery. For notification of future messages, set up an RSS feed. Thank you.

A first question from a lay person might be, "What is autologous?"

The simple answer is that it is material produced from cells that come from the same person as the recipient.

Fibrocell Science recently received approval from the FDA for an injectable treatment of facial wrinkles using the patient's own (Autologous) cells. The cells are obtained by taking a tissue sample from behind a patient’s ear and sending them to the Fibrocell Science laboratory.

In about 50 days, Fibrocell Science harvests the cells. These are injected into the patient's body, where they produce collagen and elastin.

This personalized cell therapy has been given the name of LaVio. They plan to roll it out this year.

Dr. Brueck's Siberian Diary - Day Six

This is day six from Dr. Brueck' s Siberian diary.

July 2^nd 2008

We got up and I dabbled in the shower ever so gingerly, trying to avoid the cold drops of water as they fell on my body in the bath tub. After cleaning up and shaving in cold water we meandered over to Wolfgang’s house where we gathered for Morning Prayer, breakfast and a little briefing.

Today we were going to be traveling to a small village called Imek, Wolfgang told us that a woman in the village was bringing people to us. We prayed that people would come and listen to us but we also knew they may be afraid of the strangers that invaded the small village.

The day before I was walking back to my sleeping quarters and I passed 2 women and being my jovial self I smiled, waved and said hello but there were no smiles from them, you’d have thought that I was the Grinch who stole Christmas. They just kept on walking right by me with non smiling faces as if I didn’t even exist.

So it was possible that the people would stay away but we prayed they really would come and let us serve them and pray with them. The lady who invited us into her home was Irena. She has been having a weekly bible class with Wolfgang. The pictures that I took say it all and I will let the pictures do the talking.

We waited for quite a while and we thought that no one was coming to meet the strangers and the Christian doctor. Soon there were 1 and then 2 and then they were stacked up outside. I thought it was grand central station.

In the makeshift exam room, and I do mean makeshift, we began our work. The medical problems were many and many of the stories were sad. High blood pressure and alcohol were the two biggest problems on the list.

One little grandma came to see me and she was so sweet and so short maybe 4’8 and she really had no medical problems. In talking to her she just said she was lonely and just wanted to talk and have some companionship.

She had 2 sons and 2 grandsons and one son died from suicide and her husband had passed away from alcoholism a while back. It was so sad that all she wanted to do was talk for 5 to 10 minutes so we shared some time together and at the end, Grisha, myself and this little lady prayed for one of her grandsons who was in a cult, the other boy had made a suicide pact and followed through with it and the other boy didn’t.

Such tragedy. Tears were welling up in her eyes as she told me the story, it was at that time that we prayed and bowed our heads and it was a very sad and humbling experience.

We took a one and a half to two hour lunch break but unfortunately I couldn’t eat. It was to “messy”. The rooms we were in were mildewed and there was a strange meat on the table like nothing I had ever seen before, I had to be adventuresome on this one.

Trust me, I didn’t eat a lot but I did try it, it tasted like liver and I saw these little white bones sticking out of this porcelain bowl and I was curious as to what it was. I asked everybody what it was and a lot of Russian words were exchanged back and forth and I finally had my answer, it was badger. This was the first time I had ever had badger and I won’t be rushing to Publix to pick up some badger meat any time soon.

After lunch there were more people who came and the afternoon was full. One lady by the name of Olga had chest pain by her breast. Through Marsha, my interpreter she wanted to show me and on her right breast she had a large fungating breast cancer, she was only 53 years old. She said she was going into town the next day for chemo. I told her to definitely go and I prayed that she would go and get the necessary chemotherapy.

Dr. Brueck in Russia - 4th Diary Entry

This is the 4th day of Dr. Brueck's Siberian adventure diary.

June 30^th 2008

Surprise, surprise, I am always amazed by surprises, I actually slept in, once again I fell asleep late probably about 2 or 3am and I slept until 10:30am. Grisha came by the apartment about 1pm and he, myself, Diane, and Stacy took off for the Kremlin. We saw the changing of the guard by the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

When we arrived at the Kremlin we as usual took out the rubles, you have to pay for everything here there are no free rides. Along the way there were many Nestle ice cream stands so I would stock up on these little ice cream cones that had pineapple on them, they were delicious and I would try and eat 2 to 3 a day.

In fact talking about rubles, the public toilets are pay toilets and you would have to at times pay 20 to 30 rubles and this equates to about $1.00 American.

The weather has been decent but it is always cloudy and it has rained every day but fortunately not for the entire day.

The Kremlin is huge and there are a lot of Russian Orthodox churches inside. The Russian Orthodox priest seemed to live quite well. As we were there at the big cathedral several of them were leaving after a big meeting and every one of them had their own personal body guards and got into their new BMW’s, Audi’s, and Mercedes, not too shabby. From what I understand they all have businesses and whatever that may mean, it obviously pays quite well.

Dr. Brueck, plastic surgeon in Russia - Day 3

This is day three of Dr. Brueck's Siberian Adventure.

June 26^th 2008

The train trip to Saint Petersburg was less than relaxing; my bed was a tad short. Below Grisha and I in the birth were a young mother and her daughter. Not being too comfortable and exhausted as I was I didn’t think it was fair to our 2 lower birth traveling companions to subject them to a painful auditory overload of a Brueck sawmill in the middle of a hurricane. I didn’t want them to think less of us Americans.

I arrived in Saint Petersburg in a sleep deprived stupor but I was pumped up to see the city. Not sure for what I had heard Saint Petersburg was truly one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I was certainly not disappointed they were right, the city was beautiful, and I have to say it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Many of the buildings we saw were undergoing renovations. It was truly a special treat and experience.

Thursday night was also special because European cup soccer was on. Grisha and I spent a good portion of the morning trying to find our hotel. We must have walked 50,000 miles to find this little hotel that was stashed away in a building through a doorway. It was called Nebsky express hotel. When we got there we made reservations to come back later that evening to have a place for the soccer match.

Everywhere in Saint Petersburg there were Russian flags and people were cheering and it was really an exciting opportunity. The game was going to start at 10:30pm which is a great time for the Bru because I’m usually in bed by 8:00. We had to pay 600 rubles and there are about 23 to 24 rubles per dollar and that was just to reserve a seat.

There were vendors everywhere selling flags and banners and celebrating the Russian success in soccer. There was electricity in the air to say the least. I was hoping that Russia would go up 6 to nothing in the first couple of minutes so I could competently declare the match over and head off to bed but no such luck. The first half ended 0-0 ugh!!!

When it was 3 to nothing Grisha knew it was over so we went to our rooms and by now it was 1:00am and it was still light outside and so of course since I had stayed up that late I had a second wind because in 2 to 3 hours it would be my normal time to awaken.

Not only was I up because of the day light, my comfort pedic mattress was less than ideal. In essence it was nothing more than a 2 inch mattress that had a sheet over it, but I was excited because the room did come with a hot shower so I was thankful for small favors. I probably slept for 2 to 3 hours only to get up Friday morning and begin the next day.

June 27th will be posted tomorrow.

Dr. Brueck, plastic surgeon in Russia - Day 2

This the second day of Dr. Brueck's Siberian Medical Misssion diary

June 25^th 2008

We landed at one of 3 or 4 airports in Moscow, the one we landed at was SVO, it was a considerable distance from Moscow and I was picked up by 2 members of the team.

As I was going through passport control I thought I was going to have to order pizza, slow, slower and slowest seemed to be the fashion of the day. It may have just been my nervous anxiety to begin the journey; I breezed right through customs with about $10,000.00 in cash that I was bringing over to the mission. They had sent me a check, asked me to cash it and bring new $100 bills.

I was waiting for some Russian customs official to start barking out in Russian to pull me aside and search me but I was cagey and I wrapped the money in saran wrap and put it inside my socks and I wore boots. Fortunately I went right through and was not detained or stopped in any way.

The team members were there waiting for me and I was relieved when I saw them, not speaking Russian could have been a problem and I later came to find out that very few people in Russia actually speak English.

The trip into the city was long, probably about an hour; we must have driven by 30,000 apartment complexes, of course I’m exaggerating but not by much. They are everywhere like trees in a forest.

We arrived at the apartment and Grisha, my interpreter (correcting typographical error) and I went to his apartment to get his things for our journey to Saint Petersburg. I soon found out that it is a very common custom throughout Russia to take your shoes off and put on slippers before you walk around the house.

Our train for Saint Petersburg was going to leave at 11:30 that night so we spent 2 or 3 hours trying to get rubles from the ATM machine with my visa card, this was next to impossible. I think we had spent a couple of hours contacting the States and the company and fortunately we were able to get it done before going to the train station.

We got to the train station in plenty of time and boarded around 11:00pm to begin our overnight journey into Saint Petersburg.

Day three, June26, will be posted tomorrow. Thank you

If you've had a cosmetic procedure...

...you were in good company, as these just-released 2007 Statistics on Cosmetic Surgery demonstrate:

In 2007, there were 11.7 million surgical and non-surgical procedures performed in the U.S.

18% were surgical

82% were non-surgical

From 2006-2007, cosmetic surgical procedures increased 8%, non-surgical procedures increased 1%.

Top Five Cosmetic Surgical Procedures:

1) Liposuction- 456,828

2) Breast Augmentation-399,440

3) Eyelid Surgery-240,763

4) Abdominoplasty-185,335

5) Breast Reduction-153,087

Top Five Non-surgical Cosmetic Procedures:

1) Botox - 2,775,176;

2) Hyaluronic Acid (Restylane, Juavaderm) - 1,448,716

3) Laser Hair Removal - 1,412,657

4) Microdermabrasion - 829,658

5) IPL Laser - 647,707

Women had 91% of cosmetic procedures.

Cosmetic Procedures by Age Group:

35-50 - 46%

19-34 – 21%

51-64 – 25%

65> - 6%

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Americans spent just under $13.2 billion on cosmetic procedures.

Of course, these are national numbers. Statistics for the local Charlotte County, Fort Myers, Bonita, Naples, Marco Island area will be proportionally smaller. Nevertheless, it appears that large numbers of your neighbors and friends are taking advantage of the rejuvenating possibilities with cosmetic surgical and non-surgical procedures.

As always, however, anyone you know - including yourself - should never undergo a cosmetic procedure without a thorough consultation with a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon. Why Plastic Surgery Board Certification? Because many doctors receive Board Certification in other specialties. While they may perform plastic surgery procedures, they do not have the specialized training that comes with Board Certification in the specialty of Plastic Surgery.

There are several Board Certified Plastic Surgeons in Southwest Florida. I encourage you to consult with one of them before going forward with any procedure. I offer a complimentary, no charge, no obligation consultation to any patient considering my practice for a cosmetic procedure.

You can visit my website, Beauty-by-Brueck, for more information and use the secure, confidential "Ask the Doctor" form to ask a specific question, or call my office at 239-939-5233 to arrange an appointment. Ask for Dr. Brueck or my aesthetic assistant, Judy.

Thank you.

Dr. Robert J. Brueck MD FACS