You wouldn’t trust your pharmacist with fixing your car so why do many patients allow a non-certified board plastic surgeon perform their breast augmentations? In an article featured in the “New York Times” a patient got a tummy tuck and facelift procedure for whom she believed to be a board-certified surgeon. Turns out, her Beverly Hills surgeon was board-certified alright. He was certified in otolaryngology or ear, nose and throat surgery. Unfortunately, this situation is all too common for patients who trust in a doctor’s qualifications and are being taken advantage of by greedy doctors adding plastic surgery procedures to their practice in order to rake in additional income.
How to protect yourself…

Dr. Stevens provides tips for avoiding doctors who “fake” their plastic surgery credentials and help you to find the right surgeon.

• Consult with reputable surgeons and ask for recommendations from family and friends that have had prior cosmetic procedures.

• Ask your surgeon if they are board certified and if so by which certifying agency. Use this information to double check with the American Society of Plastic Surgeons  or the American Board of Plastic Surgery that your surgeon is indeed certified.

• Ask to see before and after pictures of their work.

• Reach out to their past patients for recommendations.

States are currently looking to limit what doctors can do outside of their training, but until then, keep yourself safe and do your due diligence before handing your money over to a surgeon.

Dr. Leslie H. Stevens is a board certified plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills and co-director of the renowned Lasky Clinic, known for its extensive celebrity clientele.  Dr. Stevens specializes in facelifts, eye lifts, breast augmentation, tummy tucks, labiaplasty, liposuction and body contouring.  His practice is located in the Los Angeles area at the Lasky Clinic in Beverly Hills.

Image Source

With the result of war, many injured WWI soldiers were left scarred from battle and forced to wear their red badge of courage on their faces. A New Zealand otolaryngologist named Howard Gillies took up the cause to help benefit the soldiers and established a facial injury ward at Cambridge Military Hospital where he performed plastic surgery techniques.

At Cambridge, Gillies and his colleagues did the following:

• Oversaw more than 11,000 surgeries
• Performed a skin graft on the reputed first advanced plastic surgery patient, Walter Yeo, to treat the loss of upper and lower eyelids.
• Gillies’ cousin and pupil developed new techniques for World War II victims

Throughout the century, the remarkable innovation of plastic surgeons continued and spawned new techniques that created the foundations of modern-day procedures.

Most notably:

• French surgeon Paul Tessier created methods to correct craniofacial deformities. Today, many of these techniques are used not only for plastic and maxillofacial surgeries, but also for neurosurgery.
• In 1954, Nobel Prize winner Joseph Murray performed the first successful human kidney transplant on twin brothers. He has been hailed as an international leader in the study of transplantation biology.
• American surgeon Harry Buncke, the father of microsurgery, developed reconstructive microsurgical procedures and helped to launch the practice of replanting amputated digits and extremities beginning in the late 1960s.
• Harvard Medical School alumnus D. Ralph Millard, Jr, who was nominated in 2000 by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons as one of the 10 “Plastic Surgeons of the Millennium,” is renowned for his innovation in cleft lip and palate surgeries.

Derived from the transliterated Greek word “plastikos” meaning “to mold or to form,” the word “plastic” is an adjective that refers to sculpting and shaping rather than to the use of polymers in surgical procedures.  Furthermore, while plastic surgery is frequently evident on the faces and bodies of those who grace the red carpet, it is important to realize that not all procedures are cosmetic in purpose.  On the contrary, adversity has spurred surgical innovation and resulted in techniques like skin grafting, burn treatment, limb repair/reattachment and craniofacial surgeries that continue to improve the lives of people worldwide.

Here is an infographic of plastic surgery’s origin: