What Should You Look for at Your Plastic Surgery Consultation?

What are the three important things you should be looking for during your consultation with a board certified plastic or facial plastic surgeon to make sure you end up with a proper result? Good morning. My name is Dr. Shervin Naderi.

I'm a double board certified facial plastic surgeon. I've been focusing on the nose, face, and neck for over 25 years and I have seen and done thousands and thousands of surgeries and consultations and post-ops and revision consultations and surgeries. I will tell you from my experience of over a quarter century, the things that are extremely important. You need to one, make sure your surgeon who you're seeing thoroughly explains your anatomy.

Just saying that they're just going to do something is not good enough. They have to be able to be analysts. They have to be able to show you what your anatomy is, what you have, what you don't have, what you can have, what you can't have. So number one, they have to be analysts of your anatomy.

Number two, listen to them. I know you're going in with your plans and wish list, but you got to listen to them. Sometimes some surgeons will just say whatever you want, do whatever you want, and that's wrong. You want a surgeon that tells you what you should have, not somebody that just simply goes along with what you're expecting to have, because that surgeon may not be able to deliver it.

It's important to explain to the surgeon what you want because when a patient tells me, I want my tip here, I want my bridge here, I want this style of nose, even shows me pictures of celebrities or aunts or uncles or cousins or whoever knows that she likes the inspiration, it gives me a big idea in my mind what's in their mind and whether we can actually achieve that result for them. But they have to listen to the expert to see what can happen. Number three, make sure your surgeon is telling you what you cannot have. If the surgeon has no idea the limitations of your anatomy, whether it's a facelift or nose or brow lift or whatever, and they just say whatever to get you to sign up for surgery, that's a bad sign.

So number one, they have to explain your anatomy. Number two, listen to their recommendations. And number three, they should be telling you the things that you cannot have on your wish list. Again, that's not always.

Sometimes patients can have everything, but a lot of times they can't. So you have to listen to that. I have done this so many times where a patient comes in for consultation, sees me multiple times, tells me about Dr. So-and-so down the street or Dr.

So-and-so across the country told me that I can have this and shows me pictures. And I'm like, no, you shouldn't. And I explain why you shouldn't. And guess what?

A few weeks, a few months, a few years after surgery, they come back to me asking for me to revise that surgeon's work. Let's avoid that. Let's make you get your dream surgery the first time, as long as you understand some dreams may need to be modified.