In our office, we routinely perform multiple procedures on patients. However, we select those patients to be only the very healthy with no significant medical concerns.
The use of an assistant (particularly another Board-certified plastic surgeon like we do in our office), will reduce the operative time for multiple procedures. Elective cosmetic surgery should have safety as its number one priority. As such, like to make sure we limit blood loss, limit operative time, and limit time under anesthesia.
Although patients sometimes want to maximize the number of surgical procedures so they do not miss work more than once, it is prudent to carefully evaluate what the body will tolerate without undue risk.
Multiple cosmetic procedures performed at the same time could increase the rate of complications. We will sometimes combine procedures such as tummy tuck and breast augmentation, but we like to limit the umber of hours under anesthesia as well as the potential risk of having problems at multiple operative site.
Careful discussion with your surgeon is imperative. The prudent surgeon would rather have you return a second time than to have everything done at once because some TV show happened to profile a similar case.
