Am I A Surgical Candidate?

Dr. Yoho and friends in Argentina.

You are a surgical candidate if a number of things come together. First of all, you have to be psychologically ready for a surgery. Sometimes these things are stressful and sometimes they’re not, but you have to be willing to undergo the stresses of the possible complications for any of these given surgeries, however unlikely they are. Most cosmetic surgeries are comfortable and their post-operative recovery for most people is very modest, however. 

Second, you need to have good physical characteristics for the surgery that you desire. The doctor will help you understand just what kind of result you are likely to expect. For example, a woman with medium-sized breasts and a lot of breast tissue can get spectacular results with breast implants in most cases. A woman with long, skinny breasts sometimes needs reconstructive surgery and some of these surgeries come out better than others. Liposuction works very well for people with a lot of fat just under the skin surface, but doesn’t work at all for people with fat underneath the muscle wall. 

Of course, you need to be able to afford the procedure, and you need to be able to take the time off. If you are too busy to take the time off, many of the noninvasive procedures we do can, over time, make improvements that are as significant or nearly as significant as the invasive procedures. For example, our fractionated laser repeated several times can produce a fantastic result, and if you stay out of the sun and use Fallene sunscreen from drugstore.com (for example) and Retin-A over a year or two, you can get a fantastic result that rids you of wrinkles and really in many ways is as good as the invasive procedure which requires the two-week recovery and the possibility of more complications. 

Fillers can approximate a facelift for the right individual, replacing the fat and restoring the contours and form of the aging face to a younger contour, and when performed in conjunction with Botox and the resurfacing modalities, can be spectacular indeed. But the noninvasive procedures, remember, can be easily as expensive as the invasive procedures and require coming back to the office a lot.