Plastic Surgery: How To Look At Before And After Pictures Objectively
The decision to have plastic surgery can be a complicated one and finding the right cosmetic surgeon can be even more daunting. One of the best ways to get an idea of the true results of any operation and the skill of any particular surgeon is by looking at "before and after" pictures of other patients.
Browsing Online Pictures
You can start your research of any surgical procedure by googling it on the Internet and looking for "before and after" images. For example, you may want to know just how much difference a tummy tuck will make in the size and appearance of the abdomen. It is one thing to read about the benefits of a procedure, but it is so much more helpful to see the benefits for you.
Just be careful while doing this preliminary search that you scrutinize photos carefully to look for any image "doctoring" or things that looked digitally altered. Anybody can post anything to the Internet and some people certainly have motivation for enticing potential patients with "enhanced" pictures of surgical results. It is a good idea to sample a wide variety of images from many different sites to get an idea of what the general results look like from any procedure.
Photos in the Doctor's Office
Once you have started your search for a particular surgeon, try actually going to visit several doctors' offices and asking to see some "before and after" photos of the procedure you want done. The very first thing you should examine is whether or not the pictures and their presentation seem professional and of good quality. This alone can tell you a great deal about the doctor's attention to detail and the way she runs her practice.
You should also again look to spot photo-shopped images, but this will probably be less of an issue than it is on the Internet. You can get away with anything on the web; in a doctor's office, his reputation is on the line.
Next you should look to see if each patient comes out looking the same as the others in the doctor's photos. This can be a very bad thing in the case of nose jobs or eyelid surgeries, among others, where the procedure really ought to be very personalized to each person. If all the patients in the "after" photos look like they have exactly the same nose, for example, you should probably look for a different plastic surgeon!
Browsing Online Pictures
You can start your research of any surgical procedure by googling it on the Internet and looking for "before and after" images. For example, you may want to know just how much difference a tummy tuck will make in the size and appearance of the abdomen. It is one thing to read about the benefits of a procedure, but it is so much more helpful to see the benefits for you.
Just be careful while doing this preliminary search that you scrutinize photos carefully to look for any image "doctoring" or things that looked digitally altered. Anybody can post anything to the Internet and some people certainly have motivation for enticing potential patients with "enhanced" pictures of surgical results. It is a good idea to sample a wide variety of images from many different sites to get an idea of what the general results look like from any procedure.
Photos in the Doctor's Office
Once you have started your search for a particular surgeon, try actually going to visit several doctors' offices and asking to see some "before and after" photos of the procedure you want done. The very first thing you should examine is whether or not the pictures and their presentation seem professional and of good quality. This alone can tell you a great deal about the doctor's attention to detail and the way she runs her practice.
You should also again look to spot photo-shopped images, but this will probably be less of an issue than it is on the Internet. You can get away with anything on the web; in a doctor's office, his reputation is on the line.
Next you should look to see if each patient comes out looking the same as the others in the doctor's photos. This can be a very bad thing in the case of nose jobs or eyelid surgeries, among others, where the procedure really ought to be very personalized to each person. If all the patients in the "after" photos look like they have exactly the same nose, for example, you should probably look for a different plastic surgeon!
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