DoctorTeitelbaum

Dr Teitelbaum to participate in Aesthetic Society Webinar

jw — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:28:01 +0000

Dr Steven Teitelbaum will be part of an ASAPS Webinar: New Technologies in Lipoplasty April 1st, 2010.

How to Choose the Right Breast Size

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:36:02 +0000

Santa Monica, California based Plastic Surgeon Steven Teitelbaum, MD, FACS explains how to choose the correct breast size for your body.

Dr Teitelbaum quoted in New York Times

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:36:43 +0000

Dr. Steven Teitelbaum is in today’s New York Times for his quotes on the proposed tax on cosmetic procedures. Please visit the New York Times to read the entire article.

Photo by Ann Johansson for The New York Times

Update12/1/09 – Dr. Teitelbaum is also mentioned in Allure Magazine

Ex-Pat HealthCare

admin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:00:34 +0000

I just saw an old patient of mine who now lives in Rotterdam for a check-up. She’s visiting the United States and what do you think she is doing with much of her time? No, not seeing old family and friends. Guess again. Okay, I’ll tell you: she is too in as many visits to doctors’ offices as she can. And of course, she now has to pay for all of these visits out-of-pocket.
“Why?” I stupidly asked, “Don’t the Dutch provide free healthcare?” “Of course they do,” she said, “But the services are terrible” For instance, she said they allow a pap smear only once every five years. So she comes here to get pap smears. She has two friends who developed advanced cervical disease during these absurdly long intervals. For those who don’t understand, that is the subtle way rationing is accomplished. No one in the Netherlands would admit they ration pap smears. They would just say that they determined that once every five years is adequate.
She is just one of many American patients I have who live in Europe or Canada, and they all tell an identical story. There are also a large number of wealthy Europeans and Canadians who come to the United States for their health care. Has anyone heard of an American going overseas to get better medical care? So far as I can recall, if an American goes overseas for health care, it is either for an injection of a harmful cancer drug made out of nectarine pits or something else bizarre, meaningless anti-aging shots made from sheep embryos, or for worthless injections of fetal tissues into their brain in a Hail Mary Pass to treat brain or spinal cord injury. They only go for the unstudied, unproved, or the dangerous, and sometimes they end up getting all three. But it is never for a better open heart operation or for better monitoring of their diabetes.
I have discussed the issue of the quality of European healthcare with scores of people who have had personal experiences with their systems and ours. What I learned is that their view depends on the sophistication of their understanding of medicine. Those who have been sick or who really understand what good care is, scoff at the Canadian and European systems. Only the healthy and uninformed will defend European care as equal to ours.
That does not mean that we do not have problems. But we should not eviscerate our system until someone can point to a country with better care than ours, and until they can point to a single US government agency they would trust to administer their healthcare. We must avoid hastily pushing for change that could make us worse off than we are now.

OTC Supplements Causing Gynecomastia

Steven Teitelbaum — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:51:30 +0000

What a shame that companies will still put supplements on the market that cause unwitting young men to need to have gynecomastia surgery. Most gynecomastia is just a result of the explosion of hormones during puberty. Most men have some breast tissue growth during that period, but it usually resolves. In other men, medications or anabolic steroids can contribute to the development of gynecomastia.

In this story from NY, supplements caused erratic behavior and other complications in men. It also led to the development of gynecomastia, which can only be treated with surgery. If you want to know more about gynecomastia, please see http://www.beverlyhillsgynecomastia.com

Dr Teitelbaum’s patient and her friend film her first two days of recovery after breast augmentation.

Fat Removal without Surgery

Steven Teitelbaum — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:19:40 +0000

I presented the results of research on a new drug at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plastic Surgery last week. Read here. This drug – now called “ATX-101” – is derived from cow bile. The active ingredient is deoxycholate (DC). The purpose of this substance is to digest fats that we eat. The magic of this ingredient is that proteins inhibit the action of it, which is just one more miracle of evolution, as it therefore allows digestion of fats while preserving our own digestive tract. Just like it can dissolve fats we eat, so too can it dissolve unwanted fat when purified amounts of it are injected through small needles. This study has examined the effect on submental fat, which is the extra fat beneath the chin responsible for the so-called “double-chin.” Blinded observers of the photographs were clearly able to see a difference in the treated patients. And the treated patients all noticed a statistically significant improvement over baseline.

Most important, there were no serious adverse events, just little things like localized pain and swelling, all of which resolved soon after the treatment.

I participated in part of the study. We took a group of women who were going to have abdominoplasties, and injected varying concentrations of it into the areas that we knew we were going to remove at various time intervals before their surgery. Once the tissue was removed, it was analyzed under a microscope. This allowed us to learn on a microscopic level what this drug really did.

It is still a long, long time away from FDA approval. But if the safety and efficacy data continues to look so good, then it is just a matter of time.

So if you want your chin treated in the meantime, see what liposuction of the chin can do…the results are pretty amazing: http://www.drteitelbaum.com/before_after_photos_neck_lipo.html

Is Smart Lipo Dumb?

Steven Teitelbaum — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:01:05 +0000

This was the title of a talk I was asked to give at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plastic Surgery last week in Seattle. Smart Lipo has really taken the world by storm. Patients think that it is safer, more effective, less invasive, has a faster recovery, and causes more skin tightening than standard lipo.
Wouldn’t it be great if that were true! We’d all have one in our office But the sobering truth is that none of these claims has been validated. Not even close. And there is no selected result presented at a meeting of Smart Lipo that any of us experienced in lipo couldn’t show scores of even better results with standard lipo.
While it is certainly possible in the future that some data may validate one or more of the claims of Smart Lipo, it is highly unlikely that many of these claims will ever be proved. I think the company is happily making too much money selling these machines to care enough to fund proper research.
You see, this machine got approved through the FDA by a 510K process. That mechanism requires very little data; they just have to show that it similar to a device already approved. The device to which smartlipo claimed to be similar was a device used for hair removal and the treatment of red patches in the skin – not for lipo. How it got approved, therefore, I have no idea. But approval it did get, and armed with that approval letter, the company has aggressively marketed it to doctors and patients, becoming a household name.
The good news is that doctors and patients have finally called their bluff, and with no evidence to support their claims, interest is finally waning.
But even if – even if they one day have evidence to support their audacious claims – they would never be exonerated in my mind. To make a claim in 2007 – predicated upon research planned for 2009 – in the hopes it gets published in 2010 – is simply wrong. It just boggles the mind that people will do this.
Do you want good results from liposuction? Then interview several surgeons certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Let them choose the tool with which they will get the best results. It is about the surgeon, not the method of liposuction. If you want to see my liposuction results, go to http://www.drteitelbaum.com/before_after_photos_lipo.html

Okay To Breast Feed with Implants

Steven Teitelbaum — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:37:20 +0000

If anyone wonders, it is safe to breast feed with implants. And of the hundreds and hundreds of patients of mine that have had breast implants and later had babies, I never had anyone tell me that they conscientiously tried but still couldn’t breast feed. While we warn women about the possibility that they will lose that ability, I have not yet seen it happen.

Read the article here

Don’t Do Too Much Surgery At Once

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:23:10 +0000

This is an interesting story about how Brits are pushing their surgeons to do multiple procedures at the same time to save money. Of course, if the surgeons were able to refuse, there would be no problem. But with patients ready to go to another doctor who agrees to do it, a culture gets created where patients are doing too much surgery at once.

We have the same problem in the United States. Many plastic surgeons can’t stick to their guns and refuse patient requests. We are in a weird field of medicine; nowhere else is “patient choice” considered as much as it is in plastic surgery. And the lines are not clear and impenetrable when it comes to determining how much surgery can be safely done on a person at one time. It is all one giant slippery-slope.

My advice to patients is this: do not push your surgeon. Accept what they say as beneficial for your health. If they refuse to do multiple simultaneous procedures, it is because they do not think it is safe. If you find a surgeon willing to do them all at once, rather than being suspicious that the first surgeon just didn’t have the skills to safely pull it all off at once, that the second surgeon didn’t have the judgment and understanding to realize what the safe limits on your surgery should be.

See the video below. It is awesome and reminds us that plastic surgery is real surgery.