By Tom Haas, MD 1:33PMblog
Tags: breast augmentation, cosmetic surgery, plastic surgery, sedation, local anesthesia,

In today's NY Times, the Thursday Style section (which inevitably includes a plastic surgery article) has a feature today on wanna-be plastic surgeons (ob/gyns and even lesser-trained pretenders) doing breast augmentations under local anesthesia...to let the patient help pick her implant size DURING surgery. ]

I've done thousands of breast augmentations under sedation and local in my office. I can tell you that having the patient decide on her implant size, after she has been sedated (imagine having a few beers) and injected with a distorting amount of local anesthesia, and the swelling associated with dissecting a pocket for the implant...you're now letting her look at a mirror with fuzzy vision to tell the surgeon to change her implant size.

There is so much wrong with this it's hard to know where to begin! Start with doing an operation you shouldn't! Add inadequate pre-operative evaluation, when the patient is fully about her wits, and then all the above.

The fact that the mainstream media would even put that article in is wacko.

Nuff said.

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