Wednesday, September 28, 2011

THE INITIAL PLASTIC SURGERY CONSULTATION

Questions to ask my plastic surgeon


You'll achieve the best results from plastic surgery if you and your surgeon communicate openly and work together to achieve realistic goals. An understanding of your goals, expectations and motivation is essential to a successful partnership between you and your surgeon, helping both of you to determine whether plastic surgery is the right choice for you.

Use this checklist as a guide during your consultation:

•Are you certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery?

•Are you a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons?

•Were you trained specifically in the field of plastic surgery?

•How many years of plastic surgery training have you had?

•Do you have hospital privileges to perform this procedure? If so, at which hospitals?

•Is the office-based surgical facility accredited by a nationally- or state-recognized accrediting agency, or is it state-licensed or Medicare-certified?

•How many procedures of this type have you performed?

•Am I a good candidate for this procedure?

•Where and how will you perform my procedure?

•How long of a recovery period can I expect, and what kind of help will I need during my recovery?

•What are the risks and complications associated with my procedure?

•How are complications handled?

•What are my options if I am dissatisfied with the outcome of my surgery?

•Do you have before-and-after photos I can look at for each procedure and what results are reasonable for me?

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

SILICONE IMPLANTS

F.D.A. Affirms Safety of Breast Implants
By GARDINER HARRIS


WASHINGTON — After two days of discussion and testimony about silicone breast implants, a top government health official said he had heard nothing to shake his faith in the safety of the widely used implants. The official, Dr. William Maisel, chief scientist for the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices, said silicone breast implants were safe. “We felt that way before the meeting, and we continue to feel that way after the presentations and discussions over the past two days,” Dr. Maisel said.
There are risks to the implants, however, Dr. Maisel said, including ruptures, a hardening of the area around the implants, the need to remove the implants, scarring, pain, infection and asymmetry. “Women should feel assured that the F.D.A. continues to believe that currently marketed silicone breast implants are safe,” he said. Some patients and women’s groups who testified at the meeting disagreed.
Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and Families, a research and education group, told an expert panel that the two companies that manufacture silicone breast implants — Johnson & Johnson and Allergan — had done a poor job of studying patients who got the implants, as the F.D.A. required them to do. “And without proper data, we still don’t know how safe or effective they are and whether there are certain patients at risk for extremely negative outcomes,” Ms. Zuckerman said.
Dr. Maisel agreed that the studies conducted by the two companies had failed to follow as many patients as the agency had hoped. One purpose of this week’s meeting was to ask the expert panel what the agency and the two companies should do about that poor follow-up. Some suggested that patients should be paid for participating; others mentioned that doctors should get some money, too. There was some criticism of the 27-page research form that patients who participate in the study are required to complete and whether it could be shortened. Nearly all expressed hope that a registry could be created that would follow all breast implant patients, but such registries are expensive to maintain and complicated to create.
The committee also agreed that patients should no longer be told that they should get a magnetic resonance imaging test three years after getting implants and every two years following. The reason for telling patients to get M.R.I.’s is that silicone breast implants sometimes rupture without women being aware, and an M.R.I. can reveal this unseen problem. But many patients ignore the requirements because M.R.I.’s are expensive and it is not clear what they should do when an unseen rupture is discovered; the risks associated with ruptured implants may not be greater than the risks of the operation needed to take them out.
“F.D.A. continues to believe, as does the panel, that M.R.I. is the gold standard for evaluating breast implants for silent rupture,” Dr. Maisel said. “But there was consensus among the panel that the requirements for ongoing M.R.I.’s should be removed.” Dr. Maisel promised that the F.D.A. would study whether to follow this advice.