I’m very fortunate to be an artist, as well as a plastic surgeon. I was born to be an artist, and I found my calling in life when I found plastic surgery. Albert Einstein said the greatest scientists are artists as well. Plastic surgery is 95% art, 5% science. When we’re looking at people’s faces, we’re looking at pictures of them in their youth, and we’re trying to create a shape and a form that recaptures their younger selves, and that’s how we are able to arrive at these artistic expressions.

In today’s media, we see plastic surgery everywhere. When choosing a plastic surgeon, you need to be able to differentiate the plastic surgeon from all the other people who call themselves plastic surgeons. The basic bottom line for a plastic surgeon to become board-certified means they have had training in general surgery or neck surgery prior to formal plastic surgery training. Then they pass both written and oral exams from the American Board of Plastic Surgery. This separates them from all the other people who call themselves plastic surgeons who could have had some type of informal training or underwent a weekend seminar.

Somebody recently asked me, “What is the Dr. O’Daniel difference, because your outcomes seem to be different?” I would say there are three things. Number one’s sheer numbers. We’re doing a tremendous number of these operations and have been for a long time. Thirty years of experience, and we’re doing 140 of these a year, where the average plastic surgeon, according to our national society statistics, a doctor does 10 a year. So that’s one every six weeks, and we’ll do as many as six in some weeks.

The second difference is, we have an artistic approach. I have a lifetime of art and art training and an artistic eye that we’re applying to the outcomes. The third reason that really is pushing us to a level of mastery is the fact I’m teaching these procedures now. I travel the world giving lectures in different countries, which I am absolutely loving at this point in my career. But that requires a different level of expertise. It requires me to deconstruct what I do every day, and then teach to the average plastic surgeon, so they understand and can try to mimic what we’re creating on a daily basis.

Having been in practice now for nearly 25 years, we have patients coming from all over the country seeking our services. Of these patients that come to our practice, one in three are seeking revisions. These patients have less than optimal outcomes, and they’re seeking help. These are particularly challenging cases, and sometimes, there aren’t things that we can do for them. But most often, we can find a solution and a plan.

In particular, we’re seeing facial patients who have the stigmata of previous facelifts, and in addition, I see a significant number of breast deformities. They’ve had previous breast implants and/or breast lifts that we’re correcting. This takes a particularly high level of expertise, planning, and really a unique approach that’s required to give them a more normal appearance with their next surgical procedure.

I’m fortunate to have been in practice for a long time, for the last 25 years. And I have a lot of patients coming from around the country seeking care. Of all of my practice, at least one in three people are seeking revisions. It’s unfortunate that some people have less than optimal outcomes, but when they do run into problems, we’ve reached the point in our career where we’re providing quality care and the expertise that we’re able to correct these deformities.

It’s unfortunate that these events occur, but we’re fortunate to have the skill and the expertise to correct them.

What we’re hearing today is that the big fear of getting fillers is that you’ll look odd and unusual, because if it’s done well, by definition, you never see it. You walk into a restaurant, you walk into a drinking establishment, and the first thing you see are the large looks of the huge chipmunk cheeks. The way we avoid those looks is by using artistic touch when we’re doing fillers. Knowing where to put them, how much to put in there, that is the key to avoiding that abnormal look. Once again, we will use your pictures from your youth, as well as your pictures at date throughout the process. We have it on a large computer screen, and we’re referring back and forth to that screen at all times during the placement of fillers.