Greg:
Hey, this is Greg here from Big Bay Mornings on 99.7 NOW. And I’m back with board certified plastic surgeon, my friend, Dr. Bae. How you doing Dr. Bae?
Dr. Bae:
Doing great, Greg. Thanks for having me.
Greg:
Hey, I had a question. So I had a friend who went in for a consultation for some work, let’s just say, recently. And she went in thinking she needed one thing and the doctor told her she needed something completely different to help with her issue that she was having. So how often does that happen, and how do you guide patients into the right direction?
Dr. Bae:
Right. Usually when patients come in, they have an idea of what they want, and you might need to tweak that expectation. Maybe they’re coming in, they want a breast augmentation and they want really big implants. And maybe you need to tweak that and say, “Well, you know what? You’ve already got a lot of breast tissue. Just because you saw somebody on Instagram that had 500cc implants and you liked the way they look, maybe they didn’t have any breast tissue to begin with so they needed all 500ccs.
Dr. Bae:
But if you’ve got it, you got some breast tissue, maybe you only need 300ccs. So we’re not totally changing them from what they want in general, maybe just trying to give them a little nuance to what their expectations are. The one time that I find that I’m completely telling people a completely different operation than what they’re expecting, it ends up typically involving the neck or the jawline or the chin. And what I mean by that is that patients will come in and say, “You know what? I think I need a bigger chin,” or, “I need a more streamlined jawline.” And what it really is is they have a very full neck that’s enveloping their jawline and their chin. And so I’ll show them-
Greg:
Is that like the turkey neck or the overgrown thing?
Dr. Bae:
Exactly. They just have… The muscle that’s in the neck is called the platysma, P-L-A-T-Y-S-M-A. And it’s like this hammock across the neck, and it just kind of holds everything in.
Greg:
I love when you use big words like that.
Dr. Bae:
And sometimes the platysma… At least I’m spelling them for you. You can go back and check my spelling. But yeah, that hammock of muscle, the platysma, sometimes it’s really lax and it could cause the neck to look really full. And like I said, it just engulfs and swallows up the jawline and the chin. And they’re thinking, “Oh, I need a bigger chin. And like, “No, you really need a smaller neck.” Of course, I say it more polite and more diplomatic than that.
Greg:
You say it nicely.
Dr. Bae:
Exactly. But that’s one of the things that we’ll talk about, like doing the different neck procedures. Maybe they just need neck liposuction, or maybe they need that SIMI neck lift that I do, the single incision, minimally invasive neck-lift. Or maybe they even need a full neck-lift. But by contouring their neck, it shows their jawline better. It shows their chin. And I’m able to show them other photos of patients that I’ve operated on, where before, they looked like they had a really small chin, and that you would think, “Yes, they need a chin implant.”
Dr. Bae:
But that’s why you go to somebody that’s been doing this a while is that when I show them the after photo, they can see that the chin looks bigger, the jawline looks more refined. But I didn’t do anything to the chin. I didn’t do anything to the jawline. I just took care of the neck. So it’s really interesting to see when they come in thinking one thing. And I’m just glad that I have photos to show them to prove to them that I’m not making this up, that, “No, you really don’t need a chin implant,” which is nice if you can avoid certain types of implants, if you can just do some natural contouring to the body.
Greg:
Well, I can speak from experience because one of my friends flew from Texas to get this SIMI neck lift with you, Dr. Bae. And she always thought maybe she needed liposuction there, which I know you can do. Or she needed another procedure, because she was always worried she looked, she said, like a bullfrog. And she had a small frame, but big here, which made her look big and round. And since she’s had that procedure, she really has just slimmed up. She has a neck, she has a profile, she has a chin. So it’s a really amazing transformation. And she’s so happy.
Dr. Bae:
Yeah, no, no. I’m glad to hear that. Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it. One other example of people coming in and thinking they want one thing and that they really maybe just need another is when it comes to fillers, this might be more applicable to more of the audience, is that people think, “Oh, I have these deep grooves in my face right here, the parentheses lines. And I need fillers there.”
Dr. Bae:
Well, that was one of the ways… It still is one of the ways to treat it. But there are other ways to treat that now. What you can actually do is kill two birds with one stone, is that you can actually give them a little bit more cheekbone fullness here by doing fillers to the cheekbones. And by volumizing the cheekbones, not making them look like a balloon face or anything, but by volumizing the cheekbones, you can actually lift the face and it makes these parentheses lines less deep.
Dr. Bae:
So instead of them having these deep lines, you lift the cheeks, and you can actually see in the video, how I’m making my parentheses lines look less deep by volumizing here. So now what you’re doing is, like I said, killing two birds with one stone. You’re volumizing the cheekbones, which is a nice look, if not overdone. And it can lessen the depth of these creases here without also putting in filler there.
Dr. Bae:
So pretty nice what we’ve learned over the years, techniques that have improved, and steering the patient towards the right thing, not necessarily what I want them to do or what they want to do, but just steering them to the right thing that’s best for them.
Greg:
All right. Well, if you’re watching this video, you’re already on the website, right? So-
Dr. Bae:
Correct.
Greg:
… check pricing right here. Use the price estimator. Also, you can book your appointment right here, or you can always book and ask questions on Dr. Bae’s Instagram, which is…
Dr. Bae:
Real Dr. Bae, R-E-A-L-D-R-B-A-E, not B-A-Y.
Greg:
All right. Thanks, Dr. Bae.
Dr. Bae:
Always a pleasure, Greg.
