Gen Z plastic surgery craze hits all-time high

 Life’s fantastic when you’re plastic.

As celebrities scramble for doses of weight-loss aid Ozempic, Gen Z is booking cosmetic procedures more now than ever. In fact, 75% of plastic surgeons saw a spike in clients under 30, according to data released last week by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, which is a “consistently higher plateau over the five previous years.”

Board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Ashley Amalfi said she’s seen an uptick in young clientele at the Quatela Center for Plastic Surgery in Rochester, New York — and now, about one-third of her patients are Gen Z.

“I really see that as sort of this extension of the beauty market,” Amalfi told The Post, calling the trend “great.”

“They are a population in general who’s just taking really good care of themselves.”

Board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Ashley Amalfi said about one-third of her clients are Gen Z.

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The most common requests at Amalfi’s office from 20-somethings are breast lifts, breast augmentations and Botox injections, which she said is merely preventative.

“They’re taking the time and investing in themselves and doing these sorts of things at a younger age,” she explained.

While the popularity of boob jobs has never really waned, Amalfi said women are booking the procedure at a much younger age.

Dr. Ashley Amalfi of the Quatela Center for Plastic Surgery in Rochester, New York, believes plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures are an “extension of the beauty market.”

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Content creator Jazmyn Smith, 26, revealed to her 229,000 TikTok followers that she is getting breast augmentation this week.

“Get ready with me to get fake boobs,” she declared in a video viewed over 112,000 times. “Say goodbye to these little itty bitty titties, bitches,” she shared in another clip posted Sunday evening.

Smith, who has already had rhinoplasty and Botox, told The Post that some of her followers tried to dissuade her from going under the knife, but she’s steadfast in her decision.

Smith said her family members have undergone cosmetic procedures, so for her, getting Botox or breast augmentation has been normalized.

TikTok/@justjazzzyidk

“I want to live life with my boobs,” she said, adding that people who are “older” try to talk her out of her choice. “Now’s a better time to do it instead of like when I’m 30; I want to do it in my 20s.”

The Manhattan-based TikToker argued that the only problem with plastic surgery is if “you try to hide it.”

“I think it was more of a touchy subject years ago than it is now,” Smith said.

@justjazzzyidk

See ya after

♬ original sound – Cardi B Fan Account

@thejarr

Honestly my smile will always be gummy for those asking if it makes a giant difference but @drjlodnp has UPPED my smile confidence so much

♬ Hot New Bombshell – Dance Moms

Gen Z is known for being open and honest online, so Smith is not alone in being transparent about her cosmetic surgery procedures.

Alix Earle, the 22-year-old certified It girl taking over TikTok with bleached tresses and surgically sculpted chest, recently celebrated her one-year “boob-iversary.” Another popular content creator, 25-year-old Audrey Peters, documented her entire journey before and after getting chin liposuction online.

“I’m not saying I started the trend,” Peters told The Post at the time. “But I will say after I got it, I saw a lot of people do it.”

Alix Earle now boasts more than 3.6 million followers.

Instagram/Alix Earle

Perhaps the surge in surgery procedures can be attributed to time spent online: A report from December 2022 claimed that over half of Gen Z typically spends four or more hours scrolling on social media, with TikTok named one of the most-used social media apps.

But the time spent plugged in comes at a cost, especially to those who regularly create content. TikToker Eli Rallo, 24, tells The Post that being chronically online made her more self-conscious, as cruel viewers scrutinized her insecurities — namely, her “gummy smile.”

“I started doing TikTok, and people just started being so f – – king mean to me about my smile, to the point where I stopped smiling in pictures altogether,” the New Yorker, who has over 655,000 followers, admitted. “I decided to get the lip flip, because I couldn’t deal with it anymore.”

Rallo got rid of her “gummy smile” after internet bullies made her dislike her appearance.

Tiktok/@drjlodnp

Dubbed the “lip flip,” she got a small dose of Botox into her top lip to keep it relaxed when she smiles.

The “lip flip” procedure involves injecting a smidge of Botox into the muscles of the upper lip to keep it in place when smiling. For Rallo, who has also undergone breast reductions, the simple change allowed her to “feel pretty again.”

“When I looked at myself in the mirror, I just saw the hate comments telling me my smiles were horrible,” added the author and influencer.

@thejarr

#lipflip update

♬ original sound – Eli Rallo

 


Peters told The Post last year that the internet is so “f – – king brutal” that she paid to remove her “double chin” with a procedure called air sculpting.

“The reason I did it is partially because it was something I was always insecure about and I always wanted to fix,” Peters said. “It was something that always bothered me, I hate the way they looked in photos with or without my job being on camera.”

Rallo also regularly gets Botox injected into her forehead, joking she gets it in the same spot her father has deep-set wrinkles she “could run a credit card” through. She’s not alone; Amalfi said this is the most common type of injectables her young clients request, tackling the troublesome lines before they’ve even settled in.

While plastic surgery is typically an afterthought later in life, Amalfi tells Gen Z clientele that cosmetic procedures are “absolutely safe” even at their age and ensures they will “age gracefully.”

“We never really have a magic ball as to how exactly someone is going to age because there’s going to be so many changes in their life,” she said. “The reality is, it’s not causing any harm.”

https://nypost.com/2023/02/20/plastic-surgeons-report-spike-in-gen-z-cosmetic-procedures/

Third person ‘cured’ of HIV after risky stem cell transplant

 A German man has become the third person ever to be effectively “cured” of HIV thanks to a stem cell transplant 10 years ago.

His breakthrough case was first announced in 2019, but it wasn’t until Monday that researchers confirmed he was indeed HIV-free.

“We don’t think there’s a functional virus present,” Dr. Björn Jensen, the study author and division head of infectious diseases at Düsseldorf University Hospital in Germany, told New Scientist.

While the unidentified human immunodeficiency virus patient — known only as the “Düsseldorf patient” — is the third to be cured through a stem cell transplant, he’s now the fifth person ever cured of the virus.

According to the case report published in Nature Medicine on Monday, the 53-year-old had undergone a stem cell transplant in 2013 to cure leukemia he had been diagnosed with two years prior. However, as luck would have it, the cells came from a donor with a mutation that disables the CCR5 receptor that HIV uses to infect immune cells. This effectively made him immune to the disease like an inadvertent AIDS vaccine.

University Hospital Düsseldorf.

dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

A German patient has become the third person to ever be cured of HIV via stem cell transplant.

Getty Images/Westend61

Fast forward to today, and the patient had no detectable traces of the disease left in his system despite stopping his anti-HIV medication in November 2018. Jensen said that this miraculous occurrence demonstrated that the autoimmune disease had been eradicated and was not just in “long-term remission.”

The patient says he’s eternally grateful to the doctors who rid him of the debilitating condition. “I am all the more proud of my worldwide team of doctors who succeeded in curing me of HIV — and at the same time, of course, leukemia,” said the patient. He added that he recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of his life-saving bone marrow transplant with his donor present.

The Düsseldorf patient joins a small group of people who have been cured via cancer-related stem cell transplants. The others were American Timothy Ray Brown, who was the first in 2009, and Adam Castillejo, a British-Venezuelan man, over a decade later.

“I think we can get a lot of insights from this patient and from these similar cases of HIV cure,” said Jensen. “We can now confirm that it is fundamentally possible to prevent the replication of HIV on a sustainable basis by combining two key methods.”

“We don’t think there’s a functional virus present,” said Dr. Björn Jensen, the study author and division head of infectious diseases at Düsseldorf University Hospital in Germany.

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He added, “On the one hand, we have the extensive depletion of the virus reservoir in long-lived immune cells, and on the other hand, the transfer of HIV resistance from the donor immune system to the recipient, ensuring that the virus has no chance to spread again.”

Unfortunately, due to the risky nature of the stem cell procedure, it likely won’t be available to all of the 38.4 million people living with HIV worldwide. Jensen said further research is needed to replicate the cure outside the specific circumstances outlined in the aforementioned cases.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/20/german-patient-is-3rd-person-to-be-cured-of-hiv-by-stem-cell-transplant/

JAMA ONCOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN DIET BENEFITS WITH ADVANCED MELANOMA

 

• Study links Mediterranean diet with improved efficacy of immunotherapy for patients with metastatic melanoma
• Mediterranean diet high in whole grains, fish, nuts, fruits and vegetables rich in fiber, unsaturated fat, antioxidants and polyphenols demonstrates improved immunotherapy response
• Mediterranean dietary pattern associated with positive response to immune checkpoint blockade, a relatively new and successful treatment against severe cancers

 Scientists at the Netherlands’ University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) together with researchers at King's College London (KCL) revealed the encouraging results of their most recent dietary study in today’s edition of JAMA Oncology. Their study demonstrated that eating a Mediterranean diet, a dietary pattern high in whole grains, fish, nuts, fruits and vegetables that is rich in fiber, unsaturated fat, antioxidants and polyphenols is associated with an improved immunotherapy response in patients with metastatic melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer.

Here is the JAMA link: https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/audio-player/10.1001/jamaoncol.2023.75 and an Adobe version of the study is available upon request.

The study, supported by the Seerave Foundation, an innovative grant-making family foundation, showed that a Mediterranean dietary pattern was positively associated with the response to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), which is a relatively new and highly successful form of immunotherapy against severe cancers. These drugs cause the immune system to recognize, clear and destroy cancer cells.

The UMCG and King's College teams found that diet has the potential to improve ICB efficacy and tolerability. A potential mechanism underlying this association between diet and immunotherapy response is the gut microbiome. Preclinical and clinical studies have shown immunomodulatory and anti-tumor activities of several nutrients—including fiber, polyphenols, and antioxidants—that are mediated via the gut microbiome.

Today’s JAMA Oncology study, authored by UMCG’s Laura Bolte, Johannes Björk, Geke Hospers and Rinse Weersma, together with their colleagues at King's College London, Karla Lee, Veronique Bataille and Tim Spector, analyzed the dietary habits of 91 patients with advanced melanoma. They were all treated with checkpoint inhibitors and followed for 12 months. CT scans were used to measure the effect of immunotherapy on patients, and progression-free survival established after one year.

https://www.biospace.com/article/jama-oncology-researchers-report-mediterranean-diet-benefits-patients-with-advanced-melanoma/

Court ruling reverses Pennsylvania hospital's nonprofit status

 Pottstown (Pa.) Hospital is back on the tax rolls after the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court reversed its nonprofit status, The Mercury reported Feb. 19.

The hospital, which is part of West Reading, Pa.-based Tower Health, gained nonprofit certification from Montgomery County Court in 2021, the report said. If the decision is upheld, Pottstown School District would gain at least $900,000 annually in additional tax revenue.

The decision stems from former Tower Health CEO's Clint Matthews' "eye-popping" compensation package. Since 40 percent of his pay depended on financial results, Tower Health didn't meet the criteria for being considered a nonprofit, the report said.

The hospital has yet to appeal the decision.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/court-ruling-reverses-pennsylvania-hospitals-nonprofit-status.html

Surgeries cost far more at hospitals in networks vs. independent facilities: study

 The prices for surgical procedures at hospitals in networks are far higher than at independent hospitals, according to research published in JAMA Network Open.

Six details:

1. For 15 of the 16 surgical procedures analyzed in the study — including shoulder arthroscopy with cartilage removal, diagnostic colonoscopy and prostatectomy — the median negotiated price was significantly higher at hospitals within networks compared with independent hospitals, according to the study.

2. The median price for shoulder arthroscopy was 1.68 times higher at hospitals within networks compared with independent hospitals ($4,432 versus $2,643). 

3. Researchers found significant variation in negotiated prices for each of the 16 procedures. The median price for prostatectomy was $9,567 at facilities in hospital networks and $8,601 at independent facilities.

4. The study comes on the heels of a Feb. 6 report that found only 24.5 percent were compliant with federal price transparency rules, with many of the country's largest health systems having no compliant hospitals.

5. It remains unclear exactly how negotiated rates differ across hospitals within networks versus independent ones. "On one hand, facilities within hospital networks may have greater market share, allowing them to negotiate higher rates with payers," according to study authors. "On the other hand, being part of a network may allow for economies of scale, where large networks provide services at lower prices."

6. Researchers examined 3,195 hospitals' negotiated prices through the Turquoise Health Database, which aggregates price data published by hospitals in accordance with the price transparency rule.

Click here for more details on the study.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/surgeries-cost-far-more-at-hospitals-in-networks-vs-independent-facilities-study-finds.html

Device restored hand movement for two stroke survivors. Researchers want it mainstreamed

 Heather Rendulic yearns to use both hands to fill up her plate at a hotel buffet, or slice up her own steak. She wants to pull her hair into a ponytail. She’s tried to teach her husband, but it always comes out a bit messy.

Almost nine years after a stroke paralyzed the left side of her body at age 23, Rendulic sat in a lab at the University of Pittsburgh and used her left hand to cut a steak. Aided by a spinal cord stimulation implant developed by Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon researchers, she fed herself nuggets from Chick-fil-A, and used her left hand to draw a picture she described as “not half bad.”

“It’s a surreal feeling,” Rendulic said. “It felt like my brain could connect to my left arm and hand again.”

Rendulic is one of two participants in a study, published Monday in Nature Medicine, which showed that stimulating the top part of the spine improves arm and hand movement in post-stroke patients. Spinal cord stimulation has long been used as treatment for chronic pain, and in recent years has been studied as a therapy for patients paralyzed by spinal cord injuries. This is the first time the device has been used to help post-stroke patients, and one of just a few studies that has focused on arm and hand function. The neurons that control movement in the leg have historically proved an easier target, because they are more independent than those in the arm, which rely heavily on instructions from brain cells.

A stroke weakens the connection between brain cells and spinal circuits, but it doesn’t sever it completely. The researchers wanted to know what would happen if they used technology to exploit whatever was left of that connection. Instead of using electrical stimulation to force muscles into submission, the team stimulated sensory inputs to give patients control over their movements.

“These people can kind of still move their arm, but not functionally,” said Marco Capogrosso, the director of the Spinal Cord Stimulation Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh and lead author on the paper. “The idea was, let’s leverage what is existing there and instead of stimulating the muscle, try to amplify these circuits.”

The researchers had previously tested this theory in paralyzed monkeys and with computer modeling. In 2021, they launched a trial of the device in two women who had suffered strokes years earlier. They implanted two spinal cord stimulation electrodes, resembling strands of spaghetti, in the space between the bone and the spinal cord. The team hooked the two participants up to an external stimulator, and then used a keyboard-like machine to test the electrodes on different portions of the spinal cord. They tested the stimulation five days a week, for four hours a day.

Both participants demonstrated stronger, more extensive movement with the stimulation on, and were able to complete functional tasks like grasping a soup can. They could move their arms more fully by the fourth week of the study, even without the stimulation.

"At the end of the four weeks, we could already see an improvement even when the stimulator was off, proving that we can really have a long-term effect,” said Elvira Pirondini, a neuroengineer at the University of Pittsburgh and author on the paper. This result was unexpected, as the researchers tested the device for its ability to assist with — not cure — motion weakness. Rendulic said she felt no uncomfortable side effects from the device; just a vibrating sensation in her arm.

Rendulic ultimately regained the ability to walk and make limited arm motions a couple of years after her stroke, but she hadn’t been able to use her left arm for everyday tasks. She tried every post-stroke treatment available: physical therapy, occupational therapy, external electrical stimulation, acupuncture, massage, and more.

“This is the only thing that worked, out of everything that I tried,” Rendulic said. At this point, however, most of the arm strength she gained from the stimulation is gone.

Walter Koroshetz, director at the neurological disorders and stroke division at the National Institutes of Health, said the next steps in the research will be to identify which patients benefit most from this technology, and study how combining stimulation with physical therapy might magnify the effects and make them last longer. The study was funded in part by the NIH’s BRAIN Initiative, which Koroshetz helps oversee.

“The patients had deficits that lasted years, and then with the stimulation they saw almost immediate effects,” Koroshetz said. “The hope is that with physical therapy, those would be super enhanced.”

Eellan Sivanesan, director of neuromodulation in the pain medicine division at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said the results are an exciting sign of the growing potential for spinal cord stimulation. He emphasized the need for further clinical evidence in a larger patient population — work that will take years to conduct.

The pace of that research can be painful for patients, he said. After media buzz around electrical stimulation restoring movement in people with spinal cord injuries, Sivanesan had to let down many patients who asked for an implant to help them walk again.

“This is for research purposes, it’s very early,” Sivanesan said. “There’s promise. It’s good to have hope, but I don’t want to mislead patients that this is something that’s going to be available for them tomorrow.”

Capogrosso and his team are already preparing for the possibility of bringing the device to market, though. Douglas Weber, a bioengineer at Carnegie Mellon and author on the study, founded the startup Reach Neuro in November 2021 to start that work. The startup joins a large and growing neuromodulation industry, with major players like Abbott, Boston Scientific, Nevro, and Medtronic battling it out to market to patients with chronic pain. Weber said the team met with Medtronic and others to gauge interest in the technology, but had no takers.

“There’s a lot of inertia in those companies and they are reluctant to sort of get distracted or to move out of their swim lane,” Weber said. “They’re probably going to read our paper with great interest, but I think they will wait for us or others in the community to demonstrate the feasibility and the potential.”

In 1989, the Food and Drug Administration deemed spinal cord stimulators safe for use in patients suffering from chronic pain. There are still risks, though: Many newer spinal cord devices, relying on their predecessors, have not undergone clinical testing and can sometimes cause serious complications in patients, as the Associated Press reported in 2018. Still, the Reach Neuro team will benefit from the FDA’s familiarity with the device.

The NIH funding will help them collect more evidence, enrolling more participants for a longer period of time. Ultimately, they will implant the stimulators, rather than relying on the external one, so they can study the effects over years without requiring patients to come into the lab. Like many startups with novel technology, a major hurdle will be convincing Medicare and other insurers to reimburse the treatment.

“While we’re excited about the Nature paper, that paper is not going to help the 400,000 patients a year that are going to experience a stroke and have chronic paralysis because of that,” Weber said.

Rendulic is eager to test out the device long-term, particularly in conjunction with physical therapy exercises at home. “I’ll be first in line for anything,” she said. Rendulic often describes herself as living “one-handed in a two-handed world.” Ten years in, she’s used to it. But she’s ready to have both hands back.

https://www.statnews.com/2023/02/20/stroke-paralysis-spinal-cord-stimulation/