Contact Us  |  Locations

What are my options if I want a cosmetic procedure?

Tag Archives: cosmetic surgery

There are fewer options out there than before the credit crisis / recession that hit in ’08, but you still have several ways you can go.

Cash of course is king. Can’t ever go wrong with cash and a lot of offices do offer a discount for those paying cash. Personal checks are fine provided they are received early enough before surgery. Trust me, there isn’t a Plastic Surgery office out there that hasn’t taken a personal check a day or two before a surgery only to have the check bounce and the patient dissappear. Kind of the one bad apple spoiling the barrel thing. Credit cards are fine.

Most offices take them all, Visa, MC, Amex and Discover. In fact, I have a few pateints who have the cash ready but use the credit cards instead to get ther frequent flier miles and pay the balance off when the bill shows up.

Now, the financing world has changed. Before the Fall 2008, my office got a daily barrage of offers to finance our cosmetic surgery patients. Well, those offers have dried up and even some of the bigger nationally known banks, like Captial One, who are still viable, have pulled out of the market. But there is still financing available. In my office, we work with a couple of lenders, like Care Credit, that our patients find to be fair and user friendly. So there are still several options out there. If you want to finance the lenders are a little pickier, but they are still lending!

Lee Corbett, MD

www.CorbettCosmeticSurgery.com

502.721.0330

All posts on this blog are authored by Dr. Lee Corbett. Dr. Corbett specializes in cosmetic plastic surgery in Louisville, Kentucky.

Good question. As a Louisville Plastic Surgeon I am so used to seeing all of them that I mistakenly assume everyone else does too. I figured out most people don’t a few years ago. A patient asked me if I was Board Certified. I was and told her so. Then I asked her if she knew what that even meant. She didn’t, she had just been told to make sure she asked that question.

So here are the explanations of what you might see in a Plastic Surgeons office.

M.D.: This person is a medical doctor.

FACS: This means your surgeon is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. In order to be a Fellow you have to be Board Certified in a surgical field and be in good standing within your respective society. You can link to their website by clicking here.

ASPS: This stands for American Society of Plastic Surgeons. This is the mainstream society for most Plastic Surgeons. In order to be a member you must complete a proper Plastic Surgeon residency. At that point you are a Candidate Member. Once the Plastic Surgeon passes his Boards (see my blog on Board Certification), he or she can become an Active Member of the ASPS. You can link to their website by clicking here.

ASAPS: This is the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. This is a subset of the ASPS. The members of this society must be Board Certified Plastic Surgeons whose practices are heavily devoted to cosmetic surgery. You can link to their website by clicking here.

Any society with the words “cosmetic surgery” in its’ title is going to be made up primarily of Dermatologists but can include physicians from any training background who practice cosmetic medicine.

Hopefully this gives you a better understanding of what all those framed diplomas on your surgeons wall mean. If you see one you don’t recognize, ask!

Lee Corbett, MD

www.CorbettCosmeticSurgery.com

502.721.0330

All posts on this blog are authored by Dr. Lee Corbett who has practiced cosmetic plastic surgery in Louisville, KY for 11 years.

The real answer is you should really never get in a tan bed.  The science is pretty solid behind the fact that tanning beds can increase your risk for skin cancer. So you are reading this and thinking “Ok, I am tired of hearing that, now answer my question!”.

If you are considering Plastic Surgery, here’s your answer.

From a post surgery standpoint the response is based on skin color changes. When we make a surgical incision we are wounding the skin. In response to this wounding, the cells that produce pigment, our melanocytes, are prone to over-produce pigment. This is what makes the skin on either side of some incisions turn dark. Well, sun exposure obviously is another cause for melanocytes to rev up their production. That is why we tan. So, you have cells that already are in an ‘excited’ state, ready to pump out pigment and then you expose them to a second strong stimulus to produce pigment, and voila, you end up with a hyperpigmented scar.

I recommend that you wait at least 6 weeks before exposing any fresh incision to a tan bed. If you are dark complected, a person who always gets a great tan without ever burning,  I would wait a solid 3 months and the longer the better. But when in doubt, refer back to my opening statement.

Lee Corbett, MD

https://www.corbettcosmeticsurgery.com

502.721.0330

All posts on this blog are authored by Louisville, KY plastic surgeon Lee Corbett, MD.