Issue 2 Issue 1

 

Agreement
Editorial
Guidelines
Famous Corner
10 Dont's
Redheads
Body Fat
Handlifting
Gold Face
Avelar
Interview
Societies
DGAEPC
Beauty Tax
VASER
VASER 2
Rückblick
Ausblick
Giftig
Amazing Gel
Distorted Image
Wrinkle Killer
Brazil
In Memoriam
Enlightening
Statistics
Meetings
Reactions

 

What an aesthetic-surgically active physician must never do:

10 Dont's

 

 

An ENT - specialist from southern Ger-many loves to be called "beauty pope". In the internet he an-nounced his own "Ten Commandments", some of which are quoted below:


2. Health comes before beauty.
3. Real beauty cannot be purchased.
4. A healthy diet, sports and a positive attitude towards life can often be more effective than beauty surgery.
9. Neither physicians nor patients profit from lengthy procedures, at best lawyers do.


By contrast, we propose "10 Don'ts " which every aesthetic plastic surgeon should respect:

1. Do not risk a "beauty surgery procedure" without having received thorough training in this particular field beforehand - best become a plastic surgery specialist (after all, one does not steer an airplane without having finished pilot training).

2. Do not start consultations, operations or visitations under time pressure. Patients need your full concentration: Your relaxation provides a pillar of confidence.
3. Do not recommend a surgical procedure which you would not also, in the same way, conduct on your wife or daughter. Never take an operation lightly - even if you are well-experienced.

4. Do not make promises about an aesthetic operation which cannot possibly be kept by surgical methods. Do not keep back any information on particular difficulties and do not play down any possible complications.

5. Do not call a consultation finished before every single inquiry by the patient has been talked about appropriately. You do not want to satisfy yourself but your patients: they often have a different idea of what they want. Never agree to an aesthetic operation unless there is a real chance of improvement.

6. Do not agree to make an operation on just any patient. An obscure motivation and unrealistic expectations will lead to frustration on both sides.

7. Do not conduct surgery on a patient without thorough examination preceding the operation. You must not agree to, or make a statement about an operation on the telephone or based on a photograph. Find out about the patient's mental condition, look inside a nose that supposedly needs to be operated, test the state of the skin, examine a breast for possible lumps, do the "pinch test" preceding liposuction.
8. Never attempt to break new time records during the operation. If you were your own patient you surely would not want to be operated in record time. Maximum concentration is necessary during the operation: a talkative surgeon is as dangerous as a talkative taxi driver.

9. Never be unavailable for your patients after the operation. This is the duty of a conscientious surgeon.

10. Do not believe you did not come across complications, do not believe you had no unsatisfied patients. They are part of our medical field; even the best experienced surgeon has them. Look at them with the eyes of your colleagues.

Gottfried Lemperle and Dimitrije Panfilov