Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Plastic Surgery 101's music endorsements

One of the nurses in the O.R. asked me what I was listening to on my IPOD. Today's detour from medical humdrum features the official Plastic Surgery 101 music endorsement post. I'm always into new music so if you have anything you'd like to suggest, drop it in the comments!

New England hipsters,Vampire Weekend's caribe flavored "A Punk"


The Duke Spirit - "The Step and The Walk"


Weezer's mind-blowingly clever "Pork and Beans" video.


Super songwriter, Steve Earle's definative song about hitting bottom in rehab "Goodbye"


Heavy-metal flamenco duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela tearing up "Diablo Rojo" on Letterman


British "new soul" prodigy, Adele's "Hometown Glory"


Bat For Lashes' trippy retro, "Whats a Girl To Do?". My kids love this BIZARRE video.


The Cardigans , best known for breezy 90's hit "Lovefool" from the movie Romeo & Juliet, bare their teeth on the "I need some fine wine and you, you need to be nicer!"


New Orlean's funk-rockers, Galactic with guest Lyrics Born "What You Need"

Rob

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Sign of the Times - a short tort report!


Sorry for the "radio silence" over the past week! I've a couple posts in half finished drafts lying around which I plan to finish soon.

Meanwhile, for today's sign of the times:

According to US NEWS & World Report magazine, at the recent Mass Torts Made Perfect meeting, a who's who of class action lawsuit ambulance chasers, more then 1/3 of the audience excused themselves during a session title "Ethical & Liability Issues in Group Litigation"

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Questions about breast reconstruction


I got a late question in the "mailbag" from a Plastic Surgery resident asking



"When I was applying to programs last year and traversing the country visiting programs, there were a few trends which enticed applicants, probably none more that microvascular breast reconstruction. I was curious whether you think this trend will persist, or do you think increased insurance skepticism and comparability of implant based reconstruction and rotational flap reconstruction will leave this procedure for the uber rich willing to pay the difference?"


One thing to understand with questions like this is that while quality in healthcare is applauded, it is not paid for in a vacuum. With rare exception, reimbursement for insurance will continue to be depressed as we creak towards some kind of "federal medicare for all". As the feds and 3rd party payers look at things, quality is measured in things like length of stay and total cost rather then measuring quality in terms of "Does this type of reconstruction look more like a breast?".

Microsurgical expertise is gradually being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands as it has become a financially unsustainable procedure for most surgeons. (you can witness the same phenomena in pediatric plastic surgery & increasingly, hand surgery btw) I don't think there exists a large population of "uber rich" to sustain the field in a robust fashion, and there really is no plausible stimulus pending (50% increase in RVU's for instance) for rekindling interest in free flap surgery when other options exist.


Rob

Sunday, May 11, 2008

What do cosmetic surgery and Lesbians have in common?


Now that you've been roped in with a salacious post title, the answer is kind of boring and mundane.

So what do they have in common? Trademark issues.

This type of Lesbian on lesbian action involves the tiny Aegean Sea island of Lesbos, home to the ancient Greek poet, Sappho, who famously praised romantic love between women 2700 years ago and gave us the origin of the term lesbian, has been threatening to sue to protect it's name from being used by Gay rights groups.

Similar to other old world cities, and most often involving foodstuff or liquors, these areas do have some legal claims on words derived from the area if they've trademarked them in a concept known as "protected designation of origin".


Image Source: Slap Upside the Head Blog.

Think of things like

  • champagne - which can only come from certain areas of France

  • Bourbon whiskey - which has to come from Kentucky and be distilled a certain way

  • Roquefort cheese - cheese must be made from milk of a certain breed of sheep, and matured in the natural caves near the town of Roquefort in France, where it is infected with the spores of a certain fungus that grows in local caves (Ick!)

  • Budějovický Budvar beer from the Czech Republic city of Budweis which had brewed a budweiser (literally a "beer from Budweis") style of beer since the 13th century, had a 20 year lawsuit settled with American corporation, Anheuser-Busch Co. over their popular Budweiser brand. This Czech beer, praised by beer aficionados, is now available in the USA as the brand, Czechvar. (Good stuff!)


The concept of trademarking surgical procedures has caused a little controversy in recent years. In particular, a number of facelift variations have been given catchy monikers like QuickLift, ThreadLift, S-lift, MACS lifts, E-Z lift, Lifestyle lift, etc.... Some surgeons have even had enough gumption to send cease & desist letters claiming intellectual property violations for surgeons performing these procedures. They were actually asking for royalties to do these operations.

The "Lifestyle Lift", a minor variation of the "short scar" facelift procedures has been commercialized by a chain of clinics and is advertised heavily in print and media. There have been an inordinate number of complaints (see here) among patients with these clincs which may represent who is doing the surgery (often not plastic surgeons at these clinics) rather then some inherant flaw in the technique. You can get OK results in very modestly aged faces with these procedures, but I get the impression it's being used on people that need "real" facelifts. A popular variation (and one I like), the MACS lifts, is a little more powerful tool for trying to get by with shorter scars on some of these patients.

This practice goes against a long history of our profession disseminating ideas & innovations around the world. Cosmetic surgery is probably one of the only industries where businesses publish and lecture on their trade craft for free! In addition, many of these "new" surgeries have been described many times before if you know where to look. John McGraw, the father of modern reconstructive surgery, has quipped "If you think you've invented some new operation in Plastic Surgery, you probably haven't looked in German surgery journals from the 1920's!"

Rob

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Revisional cosmetic breast surgery - Dr O in print this month



I like to say that unlike most blogs by plastic surgeons, Plastic Surgery 101 really isn't about me, but today's post is actually about me.

I was asked by the editor of Plastic Surgery Products (PSP) magazine, an industry trade journal, to come up with something interesting to write about for his magazine. One of the questions that I'm always thinking about is "What are the things we do that really cause long term problems and how can I avoid that?".

Spending time as a fellow working with the world's best re-operative breast surgeon (for my money), Nashville's Dr. Pat Maxwell, really gave me a different kind of respect for some of the long term sequalla we can produce with cosmetic and reconstructive breast surgeries. There's a famous quote (attributed to former Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips) about Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, that he could "Take his'n and beat your'n, and then take your'n and beat his'n.". Well Pat could do the same with some of the most unfavorable or difficult to treat scenarios in breast surgery that you can imagine.

Anyway, I've kind of gotten an interest in this kind of patient and put some of my understanding and thinking on these issues down for PSP in an article entitled "Solid Strategies in Revisional Breast Surgery" which you can read here.

Thanks to editor Jeff Frentzen for the opportunity to contribute, however Jeff, I'm going to demand the cover story next time :)

Ok now back to posts definately "not about me".

Rob