In a report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), it was revealed that 80% of doctors who responded to a survey said they have patients who wanted to combine multiple plastic surgery procedures in order to enjoy a shorter amount of recovery time. The report explored the current state of plastic surgery during 2021 and 2022 as shown through feedback from members of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
One of the topics discussed in the report was the impact that COVID-19 had on practices as well as their patients. Steven Williams, MD, the ASPS board vice president of membership, said, “I think COVID was a stressful time for a lot of America, and plastic surgery, in some ways, is self-empowerment, a way to feel better about yourself. People are taking advantage of all those things.”
When it comes to combing multiple procedures at the same time, one very popular choice is a mommy makeover which is performed to help a woman gain a pre-pregnancy look to her body. A mommy makeover restores the appearance and shape of the body to how it appeared before giving birth to a child. Some of the popular procedures that are combined during a mommy makeover include liposuction, tummy tuck, enhancement of the breasts through a breast lift or breast augmentation, and labiaplasty.
Pregnancy can often take a toll on the body of a new mother. One of the examples the ASPS gave was the story of a mother of four from Maryland. The mother had a lower body lift performed in order to improve the appearance of multiple areas of her body. Some of the body parts that were addressed included her buttocks, thighs, and abdomen after pregnancy “destroyed” her body. In addition, her weight rose to 250 pounds during the pregnancy, and she began to experience some skin stretching. Plus, once she started to lose a good amount of that weight, she started to have the issue of excess skin on the body.
The mother of four was unable to address the excess skin through healthy eating or exercise and this had a negative impact on her self-esteem. She told the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, “Hips, thighs, I needed it all yanked up all the way around because I couldn’t fix it, and I did really hard workouts. I couldn’t believe how bad my body looked. As I started losing weight, I was like, ‘my legs look horrible’ the more weight I would lose, the worse it looked. It was basically because of extra skin. And at my age, things just don’t go back like when you’re 18.”
Thanks to money saved during the pandemic, the mother of four consulted with a doctor about a lower body lift. The ongoing pandemic made her realize that life is short and this inspired the mother in her fifties to go ahead and have the plastic surgery procedure she had wanted to undergo for years and remove the excess skin from multiple sections of her lower body.
Michele Shermak, MD, the vice chair of the ASPS Public Education Committee, shared how performing multiple procedures helps to create a more cohesive look to the overall results. She said, “It’s kind of like redoing a living room. If there’s an old chair, you can bring in a brand new one, but the rest of the living room doesn’t look so good. But with combination procedures, the overall view will be better because adjacent regions fit together well.”
In addition, the combination of plastic surgery procedures is also an ideal way to shorten the amount of recovery time experienced by the patient. The combining of procedures provides a more thorough treatment, and it also combines the recovery time patients have after the various procedures.
In general, the decision to combine procedures is also more efficient when it comes to the budget of the patient. By performing multiple procedures at the same time, there will be less charges related to additional fees charged by the surgeon or the medical facility. For example, the patient will not have to pay for anesthesia for separate surgeries since the desired plastic surgery procedures are being combined by the surgeon.
In addition, it will be easier on the schedule of the patient because there will be no need to schedule multiple times off work as all of the plastic surgery procedures will be performed at the same time. In many ways, patients enjoy being able to get “everything out of the way” at one time if they have the opportunity. They will be able to enjoy the desired results much sooner since they do not have to wait to recover from one surgery before they can undergo another plastic surgery procedure.
- MA
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