A ^Retired Plastic Surgeon's Notebook

Look carefully, very carefully

Seattle Plastic Surgeon Reveals Some Very Shady             Before and After Photos.

I get buried in advertisements for the newest, latest, greatest, you gotta have it, gizmos that are supposed to make my practice and my results and my life in general even better that they already are. Of course, these gizmos average about $100,000 and – this is what really fries me – they are rarely available for demo prior to purchase. This is sort of like buying a fancy new car without a test drive.

Another thing that fries me is some of the very, very misleading advertisements that many of the manufacturers try to pass off as real results. Here is an example. This is from an ad for a non-invasive fat removal system that uses energy that passes through the skin and is directed at the fat layer. Wow, what a difference until you look carefully. (Plastic surgeons are trained to look carefully.) In the photo on the right, Mr. Sixpack is pinching a fat roll that starts above his bellybutton and in the photo on the right, he’s pinching a fat roll that starts below his bellybutton. So obviously the more fat pinched, the thicker the roll. I can do this myself – big fat roll and little fat roll. I bet you can do it too!

Okay, and just one more thing that fries me, and then I’ll stop, at least until my next blog entry: Most of these new technologies are marketed heavily to non-plastic surgeons. The family practice doc or gynecologist or even (I’m not making this us) ophthalmologist who may want a little piece of the cosmetic surgery action may see this ad and go, “Wow, I must have one of these!” These docs are not experienced with liposuction or other body contouring and may not look at these photos as carefully as a real plastic surgeon. So these non-plastic surgeons buy one, it doesn’t work very well but they have to keep promoting it and using it and in some cases, giving patients a really raw deal because they have already dropped $100,000 on it and they can’t sell it because after a while, everyone knows it doesn’t work very well. So beware of non-plastic surgeons using the “latest technology”. They likely just don’t know any better.

 

Category: Ineffective, New Technology, Non-invasive, Plastic Surgery | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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