No matter if it is an aesthetic procedure based on injections or more serious surgery like breast augmentation we absolutely cannot have any plastic surgeries (obviously) when pregnant!

Often patients ask if a desire to have children later rules out having plastic surgery done. The answer is tricky: yes and no.

First of all it is quite necessary to discuss all the doubts with your plastic surgeon. Based on my experience as a consultant I need to say that it all depends on when a woman is planning to get pregnant. If we are planning to get pregnant within one year from the surgery, having a surgery is not worth it. We won’t be able to enjoy our new body because with pregnancy our body will naturally change (in the most positive way). In cases when pregnancy is planned for few more years ahead of the surgery, there aren’t many reasons not to have it.

There is one ‘but’ here though—it all depends on what kind of procedure we are considering. What calls for attention within this subject is breast augmentation and abdominoplasty. If we are planning on getting breast implants, it is okay to be pregnant and even breastfeed after this procedure. If it comes to abdominoplasty it is much better to do it after the pregnancy as our tummy will stretch throughout pregnancy. Liposuction can be done before pregnancy, but we have to keep in mind and be aware of the fact that our body will change throughout pregnancy. And that will cause changes in the outcomes of the procedure. Mastopexia or breast reduction should be discussed with the surgeon and thoroughly thought over. Both of these procedures include intervention into the glands and may impede breastfeeding in the future. Surgeons usually advise to do these after having children.

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Well this is a big subject…
Pain is the most common fear before having procedure. Fear against pain is most common among patients who are planning on having breast augmentation. I will not lie to you – unfortunately, it does hurt. Thankfully, each woman experiences pain differently. Women often say: ‘if you were able to go through labor, you will be able to cope with breast augmentation pain’, although there are some that claim labor is nothing in comparison to breast surgery ;-). My dear ladies, if it hurt so much, breast augmentation would not have been the most common and most frequently conducted plastic surgery in the world.
So, both groups of women are equally right. Experiencing pain depends on the individual predispositions of each patient. There are women that right after the procedure get up, take walks in the corridors of the clinic and do not seen to be bothered too much by pain. But there are also patients who for few first days after the procedure feel discomfort with each body movement. Definitely the first few days after the surgery are the most difficult ones. In most cases we spend our first 24 hours after the surgery in the clinic, supervised by medical staff, on very strong painkillers, so we can deal with the strongest pain. During that time we also have the support of doctors and nurses. Later, we are given painkillers to bring home. After few days, the patient starts feeling better and slowly forgets about the pain. The pain medication mentioned above is definitely the best weapon against the post-surgical discomfort.

In my opinion, it is good to tame thoughts about pain in advance the surgery. It is very important to keep a positive attitude. It often happens that patients who were very frightened by pain before, were smiling and saying that ‘fear has great big eyes’ after the surgery. They say that, in fact, there was nothing to be afraid of. Generally, if you do not try, you will never know. And, being more serious, every one of us reacts differently. Pain tolerance is an individual attribute that can be fought with and won over. After all, we women can put up with a lot.

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May patients ask when it is the best time of year to have plastic surgery. I would like to emphasize that plastic surgeries are conducted year round. Nevertheless, for a person who can choose any time, the best season for the surgeries are spring and fall. We have moderate and quite predictable temperatures, there is no extreme heat or cold, our body does not sweat intensively and is not exposed to cold.

However, there is a group of patients that because of their work, children’s school schedules, or holiday plans may have surgery only in the summer or winter. I would like to add that in my career I haven’t seen a case of complications due to high or low outdoors temperature when a surgery was done in the winter or in the summer.

As I see it the best time to have a plastic surgery is when we feel ready to have one, and ready for all the changes it brings by as well as the time of renouncements/limitations linked to the recuperations process. We have to plan our surgery so that three months after the surgery we are not going to go for a trip in a tropical climate or going skiing in the mountains. The first three months are the most crucial time for scar healing and generally getting back into shape. We also cannot forget about other clues/guides like not menstruating on the day of the surgery.

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I am often being asked, if it is possible to have multiple plastic surgeries at the same time. This question makes perfect sense, as we would prefer to limit pain, anesthesia and stress related to having a surgery to one time. The answer to this question is not so simple. We have to remember that with each procedure there is certain amount of risk we have to take in to consideration, and with each additional surgery we add more risks. There are procedures that, from the medical point of view, we can have done at the same time. Very often these types of surgeries are done together: breast augmentation and nose correction, breast augmentation and light abdominoplasty, breast augmentation and eyelid correction, liposuction and eye lid correction, eye lid correction and ear correction, ear correction and nose correction.

I know patients who could have these made together and would not experience any complications. Theoretically it is possible to connect these procedures, but we need to take in consideration the condition of our health, blood test results and full awareness of possible consequences. It is important to mention that the combination of surgeries is not our decision. It always depends on the decision of the surgeon, and he makes it during direct consultation if the patient wishes to have more than one surgery and informs his surgeon in advance. If happens very often that the surgeon caring for the patient and taking in consideration the final result of the surgery does not agree upon having multiple surgeries at once. It usually happens in regards to bigger and more complicated surgeries, like abdominoplasty, face lift, and breast reduction. For example, a combination of face lift and breast augmentation or abdominoplasty is categorically put off and I haven’t met a surgeon who would o risk having these serious surgeries done at the same time. The combination of these in one procedure can lead to a higher risk of post-surgery complications and a higher chance for at least one of them to not to bring the most satisfying results, requiring touch-ups afterwards. Let’s imagine waking up from aenesthesia after having these big surgeries done at once. Discomfort around our breast and tummy or face area would be far too much to stand altogether.

Our body has the right to rebel far more than after only one surgery. According to other opinions we should not have multiple surgeries if the total time of the surgery would be greater than 5 hours.

To summarize, the combination of multiple procedures during one surgery has its own faults, although there are pluses too. It is also not always is possible from medical point of view. If we are devoted to the idea the best thing to do is to listen to our surgeon’s opinion as well as our own common sense and intuition.

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Many people ask how long it takes for their scars to disappear completely? A scar is the result of the individual predispositions of each person and their healing processes and how we treat the incision after the procedure. A scar is a permanent change of the skin and never goes away completely. We can ‘help’ a scar to get more pale in color or soft to the touch. There are a few methods that help, for example silicon gels (to be used few weeks after the surgery), and some surgeons are popularizing an easy paper method called paper Band-Aids, that prevent a scar from overgrowing, We have to remember that the process of scar healing is long and takes up to a year (although in many cases it heals as fast as within first three months and gives very satisfactory effects). If we are still unsatisfied with the look of our scar there is a number of dermatological methods that help to fight a scar’s appearance (after the entire process of healing has ended, which takes a year from the day of the surgery).

From my professional experience I have to admit that Europeans, as a people, generally do not have many problems with scars and in most cases healing goes very fast and quickly brings satisfying results (at least I haven’t seen many cases with scar problems).

When we talk about scars we should not forget to mention keloidal scars, or keloids, which are the risk of each procedure. It rarely happen, but some patients have predispositions for keloidal scars, which are overgrown scars that keep on growing and heal improperly. Gentle keloids are treated with silicon gels, which work very well, but in extreme cases steroid injections are needed, or a surgical removal of the scar (the surgeon will tell us when it is the best time to do it).

I wanted to add that without the cut (and scar) there wouldn’t be any plastic surgeries. Nowadays surgical cuts are being made in the least visible or least exposable places. During a consultation plastic surgeon should notify where exactly the cut will be done.

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