While traditionally used on the body, liposuction may be an option for necks with too much fat, especially if the person has elastic skin that can bounce back afterward.

For those with neck “bands”, injecting Botox in the neck muscle can make them less conspicuous in a patient with great skin tone, according to Dr. Rod Rohrich, chairman of the plastic surgery department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. However, like for wrinkles on the face, Botox results last about three to four months and will require upkeep.

For others, a neck lift remains the best and long-lasting option. It may involve one or both of the following procedures:

• Cervicoplasty to remove excess skin
• Platysmaplasty to remove or alter neck muscles

According to the Times, surgeons report that men seem to get more isolated neck lifts than women. “Usually with women, they are getting a face- and neck lift,” said Dr. Felmont Eaves, the president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. “In men, we don’t have exact statistics, but it’s pretty common to see them come in just for the neck.”

“There’s no way a man’s neck, with all that tissue hanging down, can be graceful,” said Dr. Phil Haeck, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, who has done two neck-only lifts for every three face lifts in his practice this year.

Learn more about neck lifts at Advanced Cosmetic Surgery in Arlington, Texas.

Facelifts, injectables, and body contouring are three of the procedures where they are predicting growth.

As the economy improves, the demand for facelift surgery will increase, as those who have been putting off the surgery may be more likely to get it in 2011, according to the society.

Already the most popular non-surgical procedure according to ASAPS’s 2009 statistics, injectables (such as Botox, Juvederm and Restylane) will continue to grow in popularity as they evolve and new products become available on the market.

Body contouring procedures will also be on the rise as more obese people may turn to weight loss surgery given the health dangers of obesity. That will lead to an increase in body contouring cosmetic procedures to tighten and remove excess skin after dramatic weight loss.

The society also predicts that more patients will be seeking “posterior body lifts, buttock lifts and surgical and nonsurgical buttock augmentations to shape and augment their buttocks” thanks in part to celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Beyonce who have made it a “must-have accessory.”

The society sees change ahead in fat reduction techniques. While liposuction will remain the standard in surgical fat reduction, new non-surgical techniques will continue to be developed, including freezing, zapping and lasering fat, as possible alternatives to surgery.

Unfortunately, the society also sees consumers looking for bargains on cosmetic procedures. Procedures, such as “discount injectables” bought overseas and cosmetic procedures performed by untrained practitioners will lead to an increase in cosmetic surgery “horror” stories. Always research your cosmetic surgeon to ensure he or she is well-trained in cosmetic surgery.

Read the full list of predictions at surgery.org.

Dr. Steven H. Dayan, of the Chicago Center for Facial Plastic Surgery, conducted the study on 100 participants who received either Botox injections or a saline placebo for facial wrinkles between the eyebrows, on the forehead and around the eyes.

Participants took a quality of life enjoyment and satisfaction questionnaire before the injections and two weeks and three months after the injections.

The researcher found that Botox injections result in improvements in quality of life and self-esteem. Those who were treated with Botox showed statistically significant improvements in answers to many quality of life questions, including those pertaining to physical health, mood, overall life satisfaction, body satisfaction, self-consciousness, self-worth, appearance, weight satisfaction, attractiveness and sense of well-being. Additionally, increases in overall self-esteem and appearance-, social- and performance-related self-esteem were observed in those who received Botox.

The study also revealed that patients who received Botox for the first time demonstrated a greater improvement in quality of life and self-esteem when compared to participants who had previously received Botox.

“The findings in this study ask us to think much differently about Botox treatments,” says Dr. Dayan. “We have long known the physically enhancing benefits of Botox treatments, but to now have data that indicates Botox also improves one psyche, self-esteem and quality of life is very significant. The question now has to be asked is if getting Botox makes people feel better about themselves, could this translate into them being more productive in their professional lives and happier in their personal lives?”

Learn more about Botox at Advanced Cosmetic Surgery.

Statistics compiled by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) show that for those in the 51-64 age range, the number of facelifts dropped from over 75,000 in 2008 to just under 55,000 in 2009. On the other hand, for this same age group, the number of Botox procedures jumped from 672,840 in 2008 to 734,751 in 2009.

“If you are a woman who has to come back to work full-time or a man who isn’t going to be able to retire any time soon, you’ve got to look like you can compete,” says Wendy Lewis, a New York–based plastic surgery and skin care consultant. “And if you are working in a field like media where everyone is really young, you don’t just want to look good for your age, you want to look good, period.”

Overall stats from ASAPS showed that the number of facelifts in the U.S. dropped 29 percent from 2008 and eyelid surgeries declined 23 percent during the same time frame. On the other hand, Botox and Dysport injections rose 3.8 percent from 2008 to 2009, with 2.6 million injections performed last year.

Less invasive procedures not only have less recovery time compared to surgery, but they also generally cost less than cosmetic surgical procedures. However, Lewis does point out that minimally-invasive treatments can be overdone. “There is a point at which you are going to have a better result and spend less money if you just have a facelift,” she says. In addition, there are some problems that can only be fixed by surgery, such as sagging jowls. A cosmetic surgeon can help select the best procedures to address a patient’s concerns.

Advanced Cosmetic Surgery offers a number of non-surgical procedures, including Juvederm, Radiesse, and CO2 Laser Resurfacing.

The aesthetic laser and light therapy markets for skin resurfacing, hair removal and laser lipolysis will be the fastest growing segments, according to the report, and the market for botulinum toxin-A drugs, such as Botox, is estimated to grow to $543 million by 2017.

“Allergan has had a monopoly on botulinum toxin A drugs since 2002, but now faces competition from Dysport by Medicis as well as other new competitors expected to enter the market,” said Dr. Kamran Zamanian, CEO of iData. One of those future competitors may be a botulinum toxin called PurTox by Mentor. PurTox is now in Phase III clinical trials in the U.S., according to Mentor’s website.

The use of botulinum toxins is also expected to increase due to an increasing number of therapeutic treatments, such as upper limb spasms, neck malpositioning and certain types of eye muscle disorders. The FDA is also currently evaluating Botox as a treatment for severe migraines.

“A growing number of doctors are looking at the therapeutic potential of Botulinum-A. There are more cosmetic procedures performed using Botulinum-A than therapeutic, however therapeutic procedures use higher doses of the drug, therefore these two markets are similar in value,” said Dr. Zamanian.

The report, titled “Markets for Cosmetic Surgery, Facial Aesthetics and Medical Laser Devices 2011,” states that the U.S. market for injectables is valued at almost $860 million. The three-report series includes data, analyses, and competitor profiles for botulinum toxins, dermal fillers, breast augmentation implants, liposuction aspirators, laser/light devices, and microdermabrasion.

One case recently in the news was a woman, nicknamed the “Beauty Bandit”, who received over $3,000 worth of Botox and dermal fillers in a Fort Lauderdale cosmetic dermatology center and then disappeared after saying she had to get cash at an ATM.

The suspect was arrested recently and is just one in a line of “cosmetic criminals” who undergo beauty treatments and then leave without paying, according to msnbc.com. Others such crimes have been reported in Newport Beach, Calif.; Port St. Lucie, Fla.; Tampa, Fla.; Brisbane, Australia and Kenton, England.

A spokesman for the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, Jeff Karzen, says that from talking with their doctors, it’s a problem that’s occurring from coast to coast.

Some surgeons speculate it’s the bad economy and the perceived “necessity” of procedures like Botox that are the motivating factors behind these crimes.

“Botox is no longer a luxury,” says Dr. Jon Grazer, a Newport Beach plastic surgeon who was hit by a beauty bandit last year. “It’s something people have to have, and if they can’t afford it because of the economy, I think it’s going to push them to get it by whatever means they can.”

Cosmetic surgeon Dr. Samir Pancholi says that  it’s happened three times at his cosmetic surgery practice in Las Vegas. He recounts: “The first time, it was a woman in her 50s who came in and got treatment, then said, ‘My purse is in the car, I’ll go grab it and be right back.’ Then she was gone.”

These “beauty bandits” have forced some cosmetic centers to change payment rules—one now requires all new patients pre-pay.

A few months ago a blog post explained Botox’s potential to work as a migraine treatment, and now the U.K.’s drug regulator has become the first in the world to approve Botox for the use of preventing chronic migraine headaches, Allergan announced last week. While best known as a cosmetic wrinkle treatment, Botox can now be used on migraine patients in the U.K. who have headaches at least 15 days a month, including migraines on 8 days.

Allergan’s clinical trial PREEMPT (Phase III REsearch Evaluating Migraine Prophylaxis Therapy) involved almost 1,400 adults with a history of migraines and who experienced 15 or more headache days of which at least 50 percent were migraine or probable migraine during a baseline 28-day period. At the end of the period, patients were randomized to receive either Botox injections or placebo.

Patients in the Botox group averaged 8.2 fewer migraine days by week 24 following treatment, which was significantly greater than the change from baseline observed in placebo treated patients of 6.2 days.

Lee Tomkins, director of Migraine Action, said, “We have been following these studies really closely and the evidence is really pretty solid. These people spend half their lives in pain. Even if they get half the attacks, it can really improve their quality of life.” Migraine Action says one in seven people in the UK suffer from migraine, affecting twice as many women as men.

The U.S.’s Food and Drug Administration is likely to decide this month whether the product can be sold for migraines, Aaron Gal, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst in New York, said in May.

Botox is still the most popular minimally-invasive cosmetic procedure in the U.S., according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ most recent statistics, which showed that the procedure was performed 4.8 million times in the U.S. in 2009  for cosmetic purposes. 

A study found that patients with thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS)—a debilitating and painful nerve compression disorder—who received a single, low-dose injection of Botox in a neck muscle reported a significant reduction in short-term pain.

This suggests, the researchers say, that Botox could be an alternative to the invasive rib-removal surgery that is used to treat the syndrome as a last resort.

“There haven’t been many alternatives to the use of surgery to treat this syndrome,” says the study’s lead author Paul J. Christo, M.D., M.B.A., an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Botox seems to be an effective treatment that avoids surgery’s obvious drawbacks, such as its invasive nature and long recovery time.”

As with treating wrinkles, the effect from Botox on TOS patients lasts only a few months, so repeated injections would be necessary to maintain the results. Dr. Christo says some patients could develop antibodies to the compound with excessive use, which would mean the toxin would no longer block pain.

Botox’s use as a cosmetic procedure shows no signs of slowing. In the latest statistics from the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery it was the number one less-invasive cosmetic procedure performed in the United States in 2009. Dr. Frenzel performs Botox in his Arlington, Texas office.

For the full release on how Botox eases nerve pain in TOS patients, visit the Johns Hopkins Medicine website.

According to writers on Bloomberg news, pharmaceutical company and Botox manufacturer Allergan Inc, applied for FDA clearance to market Botox as a headache treatment.  However, researchers say they cannot fully explain how Botox works to relieve headaches. One co-author of the study, Rami Burstein says, “it may block the signals in sensory nerves located on the outside of the head.”

• Read more about the study on Bloomberg news and Archives of Dermatology
• Read more about Botox in Dallas and Arlington

For most people, the average age to pursue an injectable treatment likely depends on when they attain a certain level of income and when they begin to notice prominent frown lines or wrinkles. But does that mean you need to be past a certain age?

According to Bay Area plastic surgeon Sirish Maddali, “many [of his] patients understand that using Botox at a younger age can be preventative and therefore start earlier.” But how many 20 or 30-somethings actually take these steps to maintain their appearance?

According to statistics from the ASAPS:

2,464,123 Botox treatments were performed in 2008*

• 0.3 percent of patients were 18 and under
• 15.4 percent of patients were 19-34 (379,582 procedures)
• 49.1 percent of patients were 35-50
• 27.3 percent of patients were 51-64
• 7.9 percent of patients were over 65

*2009 stats aren’t available yet