I had a bit too much cheek fat around the nasolabial fold area of my whole face, so I thought I would just have it slightly refined to look better, and I underwent nasolabial fat removal surgery at a famous facial liposuction clinic in Gangnam-gu. Through posts on various Naver cafes, I ended up choosing one of several clinics said to be famous for facial liposuction. The reasons I chose this clinic were that the before-and-after photos looked good, the patient reviews on the website seemed fairly decent, and the director advertised on the website that he had been included among some kind of “renowned doctors,” so I decided on it.
Right after the facial nasolabial fat removal surgery, I had to place some sort of pressure pad on my cheeks to press down on the suctioned areas and sleep for several weeks wearing a compression face garment called a “ddaenggimi,” but it was so hard to breathe that sleeping was painful. After enduring that difficult period, the result I got was sunken cheeks, as shown in the photo below. Cheeks that sink in even more if I smile even slightly. The director said this to me: “Then couldn’t you just not smile?” I was speechless.
I looked back on what had gone wrong in my decision-making process.
1. Were the before-and-after photos and reviews saying people were satisfied really true? -I looked over the before-and-after photos and reviews once again. The before-and-after photos were taken 24 or 48 hours after surgery, and the reviews were also posted only a few days after liposuction. Right after liposuction, the swelling prevents the cheeks from looking sunken. The accurate result can only be known after several months have passed and all the swelling has gone down. Why are there no bad reviews? I definitely saw one review before my surgery saying the cheeks had become sunken. But now I cannot find it. Did the patient delete it themselves? There was a post by someone saying they had facial liposuction at this clinic a few days earlier, and when they smiled, part of their cheek looked unpleasantly hollowed in, and they were so worried they were going to go ask the clinic about it. But there were not many posts about that kind of side effect, and since it had only been a few days after surgery, I thought it was temporary and would go back to normal with time, so I did not take it seriously. Thinking about it now, I was so careless and foolish that it drives me crazy.
2. The advertisement saying he had been selected as a renowned doctor -It was not selected by doctors through a medical association or a plastic surgeons’ organization, but apparently by some internet newspaper company. An internet newspaper company...
3. Should I have had the surgery done by a specialist? -I thought that if the before-and-after surgical results were good and many patients sought him out, it would not matter even if he was a general practitioner.
4. Facial liposuction itself was inevitably a risky surgery -When I searched columns by other doctors, they said the internal structure of the face is made up of many different tissues intertwined together and is extremely complex, so performing liposuction from outside the face is essentially the same as performing a procedure while blindfolded. It is impossible to remove fat evenly, and in the end, in areas where too much fat is removed, the skin and fascia inevitably stick together and form adhesions.
*Legally, they say you are not even allowed to publicly mention the initials of the clinic, right? What kind of law is this? Shouldn’t laws exist for victims or the vulnerable?