How Old Should Your Plastic Surgeon Be?

What is the right age of your plastic surgeon? I mean, do you even think about that? You're out there on Google, ChatGPT, whatever you're searching, Instagram, you're looking at before afters, you're looking at board certification, you're looking at reputation reviews, but do you even look at the age? What's the right age?

Well, hear me out. I'm Dr. Shervin Naderi, double board certified facial plastic surgeon who's been practicing in the Washington DC greater metropolitan area for almost 25 years. When I moved here almost 25 years ago was there were four plastic surgeons in McLean, Virginia, for those of you who are familiar with that area.

Today, there's 45. The area has grown, it's boomed. There are so many plastic surgeons now, I can't keep up with them. What made me think about my own career, kind of the gray hair, made me reflect back to when I started.

I finished my residency at one of the top residencies and one of the best fellowships in the country. It's not just what they put on their website, it's their experience. We learn from bad experiences. It's not easy to learn from good experiences in any field.

It's always the bad ones, the complications, the things that didn't turn out the way we thought they were gonna turn out that makes us grow, makes us improve, makes us pivot, makes us do things differently and better. So when you're looking for a plastic surgeon for a deep plane facelift, rhinoplasty, or brow lift, whatever, you have a lot of options today, more than you did 20 years ago. And it's not an easy decision, but you got to weigh all these facts. If I look back and my techniques have dramatically changed.

Every few years, I update my techniques. My staff sometimes get frustrated even with my pre and post-op instructions. They say, why do you keep changing it? Because I keep evolving, I keep trying to improve, trying to get better and better results for my patients.

Nothing should stay the same. But when I came out of residency and I thought I was the face guy, I had such an amazing training, residency, fellowship, the pedigree was strong and my focus was just on face. So I worked. Now that I look back, I didn't know what I didn't know.

So the big question is, what is the right age for a plastic surgeon? When you're in practice, five, 10, 15, 20 years and more, you know so much more than you didn't know when you started. You may be fantastic five years out, but you'll be amazing 20 years out. Now you get to a point where your judgment's amazing, your knowledge is amazing, your decision making's amazing.

But once you get into your mid 70s, then your manual dexterity may not be there.