Rina Shinn, MD

Eyelashes growing in at strange directions. Mascara highlights this. Frustration! I don't know......

I had used RapidLash in the past with lengthening of the lashes noted, but then the effects seemed to weaken. Finally decided to bite the bullet and try Latisse. I did have alot of soreness and itching at first, but that's gone. I have been using it about 5 weeks. I am 60 yrs. old and have serious thinning of the eyelashes and my poor eyebrows were down to what you could count on one hand. I used it on the eyebrows and got great results, esp. on the inner side. The eyelashes however, are a different story. All of a sudden things got darker and thicker---but definitely not uniformly. This I could live with. But the new thicker eyelashes are growing in at really crazy directions and some of them are slightly curly. Trust me, this does NOT look beautiful in mascara. The length is uneven as well. I even took the scissors to them to try to even the look. I am going to see what happens at the end of the bottle. I would rebuy for the eyebrow results, but right now I'm not sure the mess I have with the lashes will straighten out. Has anybody else noted this irritating side effect?

If you are considering to have plastic surgery with Dr. Shinn, please read my review. It will be a little long, but I wish someone else would have posted about their experience with having plastic surgery before I ever did.

First off, let me say that Dr. Shinn is not a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon, but a Board Certified General Surgeon. She has never been trained in plastic surgery or gone went to school for this. She does not say she is a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon, but she does market herself misleadingly by saying she is the only plastic surgeon in southern Colorado, which is not true! Dr. Krishna Dash is a Board Certified plastic female surgeon in Southern Colorado.

I had a tummy tuck and breast augmentation with Dr. Shinn. Initially, Dr. Shinn said I did not need a breast lift because the implants would lift my breast. After 2-3 months, the implant was in its place but my breast started to droop and looked horrible! My breast looked worse than they did before I had the implants. Dr. Shinn offered a breast lift of course, for $10,000! The American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports that the average cost for a lift is $4,377. In addition, my implants were made a lot larger than what I asked for. I wanted a size C cup and ended up with a D or DD cup! Unfortunately, this is not all that went wrong. My tummy tuck was closed using staples. The staples were left longer than they should have (3 weeks) and my skin started to grow on top of the staples, therefore when these were removed you could hear my screams outside the building because it was so painful. And that was not all, the staples made horrible marks on my skin and the scar was very wide. A lot of my belly button was removed and I know have a tiny belly button, so tiny that not even a Q-tip can fit! Thanks to Dr. Shinn I had to have to additional surgeries: one to fix my tummy tuck scar and another to fix my breasts. Thanks to her I spend all my savings that I planned to use for school and not to mention the pain of each surgery and the recovery time. Even with these two surgeries, my belly button could not be fixed because there is just not enough left. So, while Dr. Shinn seems to talk with a lot of knowledge she does not have the training needed to do plastic surgery. Reading something from a scientific journal is not the same thing as knowing how to apply it. Maybe is a good general surgeon as this is what she was trained to do, but she is definitely not a good plastic surgeon. Would you go to a brain surgeon to have heart surgery? Probably not…

I would also like to add that Dr. Shinn has a very high turnover of her employees, both nursing and secretary which in my opinion, is not a good reflection of her practice. In addition, now that I have the experience of having had surgery with a board certified plastic surgeon, I can tell you that the professionalism of the practice is a million times better! I hope my story helps you make a decision about Dr. Shinn.