UNDER THE KNIFE

Woman, 60, Undergoes Facelift for Her ‘Ozempic Face’

First, her weight went down. Then, her face began to gravitate downward, too.

Pamela started taking Wegovy, an appetite-suppressing GLP-1 drug, in March 2023.

By November the following year, just over 18 months later, she was down 49 pounds from her starting weight of 179. While she enjoyed her incredible transformation, she did not enjoy one side effect: her face’s hollow appearance.

“She’s a classic example of what we call an ‘Ozempic face’ or a ‘GLP-1’ face,” board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Mark Hamilton told The Looker. “She had lost weight, lost volume, and noticed sagging skin in her face and neck. That’s very common for a GLP-1 patient.”

Dr. Hamilton has noticed the growing popularity of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy at his Indianapolis, Indiana, practice.

“A week does not go by when I don’t see somebody who has been on GLP-1s, lost quite a bit of weight, has sagging skin, and wants to bring things back,” he said.

Adding, “GLP-1s are great. There are tons of benefits to them for your health, but in terms of facial aging, they’re not so great, and that’s where we can help.”

To manage the effects of rapid weight loss, Dr. Hamilton said it is key to address both the excess skin and the hollowness that follows volume loss in the face.

For Pamela, this meant multiple procedures.

First, Dr. Hamilton addressed the excess skin and tightened her jawline with an extended deep plane facelift. To reduce the puffiness under Pamela’s eyes, he also performed a lower blepharoplasty, or lower eyelid lift.

In addition to removing excess skin from Pamela’s under-eyes, he repositioned her under-eye fat, relocating it to the more hollow tear troughs.

He then topped off the transformation by adding volume.

“A critical part of the volume loss is replacing it using autologous facial fat grafting,” he explained.

During the procedure, he harvested fat from Pamela’s stomach, purified it, and injected it into areas that needed extra volume. It helped make her cheeks plumper and fuller, and her skin more youthful.

The procedure took five and a half hours, was performed under anesthesia, and totaled around $40,000.

The recovery period is typically straightforward: Patients have sutures for a week, and they need to take it easy for two weeks. After that, most patients are more than OK to go out in public.

“There can be subtle swelling, but most patients really are very presentable by two weeks,” Dr. Hamilton said. “And certainly by a month, they can go to major events and things like that.”

Dr. Hamilton has a few extra instructions for his GLP-1 patients: stop the medication two weeks before surgery and stay off it for two weeks after to support optimal results and a smoother recovery.

Patients who are itching to get back to the gym must wait two weeks for aerobic workouts and three weeks for any kind of heavy lifting.

On Dr. Hamilton’s Instagram, commenters gushed over Pamela’s “beautiful” and “wonderful” results.

“Absolutely amazing,” one person wrote. “She must be so happy.”

And Pamela was.

“She was thrilled with her results,” Dr. Hamilton said. “She felt like she had lost the volume in her face and now got it back. She loved that.”

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Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

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