Study suggests average of 3 years of apparent age saved after facial plastic surgery, no consistent improvement in attractiveness

Main Category: Cosmetic Medicine / Plastic Surgery
Article Date: 01 Aug 2013 - 13:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Study suggests average of 3 years of apparent age saved after facial plastic surgery, no consistent improvement in attractiveness

A study suggests that after aesthetic facial plastic surgery the average number of apparent"years saved" (true age minus guessed age) was 3.1 years but there was only an insignificant increase in attractiveness scores, according to a report published by JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, a JAMA Network publication.

Patients seek out aesthetic facial surgery to look younger and more attractive but there is minimal literature about the effect of the surgery on perceived age and attractiveness, according to the study background.

A. Joshua Zimm, M.D., of the Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Institute of North Shore-LIJ Health System, New York, and colleagues quantitatively evaluated the degree of perceived age change and improvement in attractiveness following surgical procedures.

Independent raters examined preoperative and postoperative photographs of 49 patients who underwent aesthetic facial plastic surgery between July 2006 and July 2010 at a private practice in Toronto, Canada. The photographs were shown to 50 blind raters. Patients in the study ranged in age from 42 to 73 years at the time of surgery with an average age of 57 years.

On average, raters estimated their patients' ages to be about 2.1 years younger than their chronological age before surgery and 5.2 years younger than their chronological age after surgery. The average overall years saved following surgery was 3.1 years, according to the results. There also was a small and insignificant increase in attractiveness scores in postprocedural photographs, the results indicate.

"In conclusion, the subjective nature of facial rejuvenation surgery presents a challenge in the assessment of successful results," the study concludes. "Given the limitations of the attractiveness component of this study as described herein, further investigation is warranted to verify these findings."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our cosmetic medicine / plastic surgery section for the latest news on this subject.

JAMA Facial Plast Surg. Published online August 1, 2013. doi:10.1001/jamafacial.2013.268.

JAMA

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Your eyes are half a billion years old

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Academic Journal
Main Category: Eye Health / Blindness
Also Included In: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 04 Aug 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Your eyes are half a billion years old

Eyes are amazing and technical organs, precious to each individual. But how did the human eye develop? According to a review of the evidence, it stems back to fish more than 500 million years ago.

Professor Trevor Lamb of The Vision Centre and Australian National University conducted a major scientific review of the origin of the eye, in which he analyzes findings of hundreds of scientists worldwide.

From this review, published in the journal Progress in Retinal and Eye Research, the most significant finding is how the eye has evolved to become the organs we have today.

Prof. Lamb says that the origins of sight date back to more than 700 million years ago. At this time, the earth was only inhabited by "single-celled amoeba like animals," such as bacteria, algae and corals.

Researchers say that human eyes, as we know them, may have taken 100 million years to fully develop

Prof. Lamb explains that during this period, the first light-sensitive chemicals, known as opsins, appeared. He says that opsins were used by some organisms as a way of sensing day from night.

He explains that these organisms already possessed "signaling cascades" that could sense chemicals in their environment, and while opsins allowed them to see light, "these animals were tiny, and had no nervous system to process signals from their light sensors."

The review says that over the next 200 million years, the opsins evolved to become better at detecting light, and they became more sensitive, faster and reliable.

But Prof. Lamb says it was around 500 million years ago when the human eye began to develop.

He says:

"The first true eyes, consisting of clumps of light-sensing cells, only start to show up in the Cambrian, about 500 million years ago - and represent a huge leap in the evolutionary arms race. Creatures that could see clearly had the jump on those that couldn't."

He uses the example of an Anomalocaris. This was a meter-long shrimp-like predator, which Prof. Lamb refers to as the "jaws" of its time. Researchers believe the creature had eyes the size of marbles that it used to hunt its prey and for navigation in the sea.

It is also thought that this creature possessed more than 16,000 facets in each eye which contained "vision cells."

Prof Lamb says:

"This generates an avalanche of information, known as optic flow, running from the eyes and along the creature's nervous system. This all has to be processed, so we also begin to see the rapid development of a central nervous system able to cope with such immense amounts of data, continually provided by the eyes and other sensory organs from the world around the animal.

For the first time animals begin to 'see' the complex landscape which they inhabit."

He says that Lampreys, a jawless fish that is part of the eel family, first appeared during this period. These fish possess "camera-style" eyes very similar to human eyes. He adds that Lampreys may be the "direct forerunners" of the vertebrate eye.

"From this we can say that the vertebrate-style eye has been around at least 500 million years," says Prof. Lamb. "Although its light-sensors and signaling systems are very similar to those of insects and other invertebrates, its optical system evolved quite independently from the insect-style eye with its many facets."

Prof. Lamb notes that from 500 million years ago, the basic plan of the vertebrate eye became more settled, gradually evolving from fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and then to us.

He adds that the development of the human eye as we know it today may have taken as long as 100 million years to fully develop.

Prof. Lamb concludes that the purpose of this review is to understand how the evolution of the human eye happened, in order to see how the human photoreceptors may evolve in the future.

Written by Honor Whiteman

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