Your Facial Plastic Surgery Consultation

A facial plastic surgery consultation is the visit where you and a surgeon decide whether a procedure fits your goals. For anyone who wants to avoid revision surgery, it is the visit where your revision questions get asked, so preparing for it matters.

Guides for the days before your visit

Asking for Complication Rates: how to ask the question, and how to tell whether the answer is specific.
Facility and Anesthesia Questions: where the procedure happens and who provides the anesthesia.
Surgeon Experience and Before-After Photos: how to read both without being swayed by the best examples.
Consultation Checklist for Patients: what to bring and what to leave with.

Candidacy is a good topic to raise early. A professional society page on rhinoplasty candidates shows the kind of factors a candidacy discussion covers. A different example from the research literature is a supra-brow combined with infra-brow lift approach for Asian women, a technique described for a specific group of patients. It is fair to ask why a surgeon picked a given technique for you.

To prepare for the visit itself, a plastic surgery society article offers tips and tricks for acing your plastic surgery consult. Use it to shape the written list you bring.

Start with the checklist

Read the checklist first, then the guide that matches your biggest worry. Bring a written list to the consultation, and ask the surgeon to explain anything that is unclear.