A ^Retired Plastic Surgeon's Notebook

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.

Seattle Plastic Surgeon discusses the limitations of some of the newest, most expensive and most advertized gizmos.

Take a look at this “before” and “after”.

As promised, here’s the inside of the brochure that shows the “results” and you can be sure these are the best results the company could come up with. The “CoolSculpting” gizmo is promoted as a non-invasive body contouring procedure. I would say non-invasive and ineffective.

Most of the doctors that will purchase this device or one of the dozens similar to it are non-surgeons. These doctors do not know how to do an abdominoplasty (tummy tuck) so they offer this instead. I’m sure they go into it with high hopes but how can they not be disappointed at such a “result’? Once they have paid the $$$$$$ for the gizmo, they need to promote it to make sure they get a decent return on investment.

If any of my abominoplasty patients had a result like this, they would feel ripped off. I suspect the doctors using “CoolSculpting” are going to have some unhappy patients. Geez, everyone could have saved all that time, money and gnashing of teeth by referring those patients to me!