Liposuction is not only about the fat—it’s about the overlying skin. Liposuction can be used to remove fat from just about any area of the body but the key to a nice looking result is having good skin tone. When I evaluate my Clientele in Maryland and Virginia for Liposuction, with their permission, I pinch them to assess the skin tone.

If the skin tone is good (good elasticity) and I remove fat from under the skin, the skin will shrink up and that person will have a nice result. If the skin tone is loose, I can still remove fat, but the skin may wind up looser, wavier or more irregular. In order to be happy a patient with a skin tone that is loose will need a different set of expectations then a patient with good skin tone.

The paradox of liposuction is the people who do the best are often the people who need it the least. Young people with good skin tone often get the best results from liposuction. This is not true with all procedures of cosmetic surgery.

The best candidates for cosmetic liposuction have good skin tone and specific diet resistant areas. It is much easier and safer to satisfy a patient with a specific goal than someone who says “make me skinny”.

I used to think the term “body contouring” was just an attempt to call liposuction something sexier. Twenty years later body contouring describes exactly what I do. I can’t make a heavy person skinny, but I can make them more streamlined. I can’t erase all fat but I can make it fit the body better.

Liposuction can be performed alone or in combination with a procedure such as abdominoplasty. The treatment option depends on a patient’s goal, healthy, amount of fat, and location of area or areas that need treatment. If you live in the Maryland, D.C. or Virginia area and have been considering liposuction and want to be as healthy as you can be; contact my office. I’d be happy to give you a pinch and a heartfelt opinion.

In my own practice we reconstitute the Botox® strictly according to the manufacture’s guidelines. It is a concentrated solution that allows us to put smaller but stronger amounts in the areas of concern. This increases its effectiveness and minimizes its migration to areas we don’t want it to affect.

We have a steady stream of Botox patients, which allows us to use our supply of Botox quickly – meaning fresher and more effective Botox.

We also charge by the unit. What does that mean? Botox bottles contain one hundred units of botulinum toxin. Common areas treated include the area between the eyebrows (glabella), crow’s feet, and forehead. While the average full area will cost about $350, charging by the unit means our patients can buy more or less if they want. If a small area needs refreshing, we charge only for the units necessary and not the whole site. I think this is a more common sense approach.

Botox is not an exact science. We ask each of our patients to return in 10 days to evaluate the results of their treatment. By recording how satisfied they are and how they reacted to their last treatment, future treatment plans can be fine tuned. We can also discusses other procedures that you may be interested in such as a facelift.

If you’d like to learn more about the best Botox please feel free to contact my office to schedule a consultation.

I grew up in the home of an artisan.  My mother became a goldsmith when I was young and my father and I built her an art studio.  What I didn’t realize while building the studio was that I would spend more time in it than she would.  Through grade school and high school I made sterling silver jewelry and sold it at street fairs and events in New York.  Some of my pieces were even chosen to be displayed in a school show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I would listen to the television at night while working in the studio.  One night NOVA had a show about plastic surgeons creating normal faces for people with facial deformities. I was drawn to the show and realized that the tools I was using in the studio were extraordinarily similar to the tools needed to restore hope to these patients.  I knew then that I wanted to be a board certified plastic surgeon.  I have subsequently had the honor of meeting many of the people featured in the documentary.

So daily, I work in an occupation that fulfills my needs as human, artist and craftsman and physician.  There is only one thing more gratifying than using these skills to help others…teaching my daughter how to make jewelry and my son to hold a hammer.

To learn more about me contact my office today to schedule a consultation. I would be happy to help you determine what procedures are appropriate and together we can enhance your natural beauty whether it is setting back the hands of time and rejuvenating the face, slimming the waist line by liposuction, or boosting your self confidence with a breast augmentation. Together we can achieve your aesthetic goals.

Early in its evolution cosmetic plastic surgery was an offshoot and little publicized branch of plastic and reconstructive surgery.  Surgeons had different approaches and techniques that they generally kept to themselves.  There were no defined standards for evaluation and comparison.  The creation of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery brings us together to share ideas, learn new concepts and critically evaluate the old ones.  The Society continually promotes the safety, certification and training of its members so that we can go forward and practice the most advanced and reliable cosmetic medicine possible.

1. Give yourself off about a week for all but the most minor procedures:
It is better to be pleasantly surprised and need less recovery time than to need more time and not have it.  I go into detail about the expected average recovery for each procedure in consultation.  Some patients may take less than average amounts of time to recover but some may take more.  Better to be on the safe side and have more than adequate time.

2. Have support at home:
My clientele is made up of healthy people.  As such, I perform most of my surgeries outpatient.  It is my firm belief that hospitals are full of illness and harmful bacteria.  I feel strongly that my patients get better care in a cleaner and healthier environment when they are at home with the support of a spouse or loved one.

3. Plan ahead:
If you want to enjoy your figure in the summer have your surgery in the winter or fall.  I see an influx of breast augmentation patients just before the summer each year.   Implants take 3- 6 months or more to settle post op.  Patients who come in earlier in the year will look more settled and natural by the time summer comes.

4. Don’t do surgery right before a major life event.
Each year I see the bride who wants breast implants two weeks before the wedding or her mother who may want a face lift. While I would love to be the physician for these patients it makes no sense to have surgery just before an important life event. Plan at least six months ahead if you can.

5. Stay in the area for a while:
In a perfect world my patients would live next door for a week following surgery.  While not realistic I at least want to have my patients in the vicinity.  Once in a while I have a patient who plans to hop on a plane and recover in an exotic location.  It is just as important for me to be available to you after surgery as before.  Stick around for a while.

6. Stop Smoking.
Without doubt this is the toughest of the recommendations and the hardest for patients.  Smoking exponentially increases the risks of healing problems or infections. While not everyone is able to stop it is one of my strongest recommendations and requires the most forethought.

7. If you have any medical problems schedule even further ahead:
My goal is to perform your surgery as safely as possible.  For patients with medical issues we need time to get appropriate testing and clearance where necessary. It can take more time to get these evaluations and results.

If you would like help in safely planning the procedure you are considering please don’t hesitate to call my office and schedule a consultation.

Facelifts fall into one of two categories: Mini or Full. You may have heard of the ones with the cute names like S-lift, Thread lift, or Lifestyle lift. These are often marketed in the popular magazines, and are merely variations on the mini-facelift.

So which one do I recommend?—the one that fits my patient.

When a patient comes in to my office for a consultation I will listen to their goals and concerns, look at their hairline and hairstyle, and recommend a specific plan. I perform all of these procedures, but I will pick the specific components of each that will achieve the patient’s goals and try to minimize scars where possible.

I begin with the premise that no one wants the bigger facelift, but a patient with a turkey gobbler neck will need a more aggressive approach than the patient who comes in with a tad of neck laxity and a little joweling.  Some will benefit from an eyelid or brow lift, while others may not. Some don’t even need surgery at all, but may do better with laser, chemical peels, or fillers. Each patient is different, and each will need his or her own subtle surgical variations.

I’m not a fan of the alphabet soup of facelifts, but prefer to tailor a procedure to the individual patient.  If you are interested in learning what would be best for you, contact me, and I’d be happy to help you sort through the options.

The best way to treat the bigger disease is prevention. In my cosmetic surgery practice I have a few rules of thumb when considering breast augmentation.

1.) We talk about the bigger disease from the get go so patients can incorporate it into their breast implant size decision making. If the patient is agonizing between two implant sizes I will generally urge on the side of slightly fuller because implants tend to look smaller inside the body than they do in sizing bra’s.

2.) We size implants extensively at the initial consult (I think trying on actual implants is the best method), and we have pretty much an open door policy encouraging women to try on breast implant sizers as many times as they like before the surgery. It is best to be confident of your decision before the day of surgery. Each of my offices is stocked with high, moderate and low profile sizers for your breast.

3.) Bring a friend, relative or significant other to your sizing session along with a work blouse, casual blouse or sweater and even exercise clothes. It’s good to have a second opinion from a friend or loved one. Making sure that you are comfortable in work and play clothing is important as well.

If you’re considering breast enhancement contact my office today to schedule a consultation. I look forward to helping you achieve a sense of balance through breast augmentation.

Breast enhancement:

In a rather cruel way the breasts enlarge with childbearing but they often deflate after weaning leaving even less volume than before pregnancy. My patients who have had children complain of feeling “deflated” after pregnancy and they just want to feel normal again, nothing more, nothing less. Through breast augmentation or breast lift and sometimes both I help to restore the balance of what used to be.

Tummy enhancement:

The other part of “mommy makeover” is the tummy. While sometimes the skin of the tummy will shrink back well after delivery, often it does not. Some women will do well with their first pregnancy but not with the second. The usual treatment here is tummy tuck. What! , tummy tuck, not liposuction? Yes, when the skin becomes loose, wavy saggy or irregular it needs to be tightened. Liposuction makes skin looser not tighter. I guide my patients by pinching on their tummies. If the skin tone is good (which is unusual postpartum) I will recommend liposuction. If the skin is loose I may recommend full or mini tummy tuck depending on how much I can pinch.

“My husband says I should just go to the gym and work it off…” is something I hear daily. What the men often don’t understand is that the problem isn’t the muscles at all. The problem is the “overstretched” skin. Women with loose skin who diet, exercise and do everything right usually see weight loss. Paradoxically the weight loss leads to even more loosening of the skin and greater need for tummy tuck.

If you feel loose or deflated after child bearing and would like to be evaluated please contact our office today.

While the breast certainly plays an important part, to me the key is a sense of balance when I look at the entire person and especially the hips.

Prospective Breast implant patients are taken to an implant sizing room in my office where we keep implants to try on in all sizes. Before I walk into the consultation, the breast augmentation patient has often already chosen and is trying on the smallest breast implant in our sample drawer.

I think the conventional wisdom is that “smaller” will always be more natural. I try to instill in my breast implant patients that “balance” is more natural.

Small breast implants tend to be narrow which may be just fine for a very narrow chested breast implant patient. But in the average breast augmentation patient a breast implant that is too narrow for the breast will tend to look like a torpedo. A breast implant that is too wide will make the patient look “top Heavy”.

Breast augmentation patients’ Height makes a huge difference as well. Tall people will look very different than shorter people even with the same implant.

During my breast implant sizing sessions we first find the breast implant diameter that fills the chest appropriately and has enough diameter to balance with the curve of the hips. Once we like the diameter I can then change the size of the breast by looking at high, moderate or low profile breast implants in that same diameter.

If you look at the breast augmentation photographs on my web page I always try to include the hips so patients can see the overall balance. Breast implant photos that only show a “Box of breasts” tells only a small part of the story.

I encourage all my breast enlargement patients to come to the sizing room as many times as needed to try real breast implants on their frame. Many come with friends or spouses. Many breast augmentation patients will bring different blouses or sweaters with them.

Breast augmentation is an important and long term decision. If it’s something you have been considering I encourage you to come in and search for a sense of proportion as well.