Board-certified plastic surgeons are sharing what experience has taught them never to do, and some of their suggestions could save lives, limbs, or heartache for parents and patients.
In June, industry insiders and specialists began taking to TikTok to help people avoid common pitfalls, mostly known only to those within a respective industry.
Pilots, pharmacists, teachers, lawyers, bartenders and others joined in.
For plastic surgeons, who are licensed MDs, did years of residencies, and are often on-call at area hospitals where they hold operating privileges, their suggestions ranged from procedures to avoid, to situations where child safety is given less concern than called for.
Most mentioned procedures, precautions
Though surgeons shared no directly contradictory suggestions, their professional opinions varied greatly.
The surgeons, who created videos independently, spoke most of the following:
- Six surgeons (46%) discussed not smoking or vaping, and not for the classic reasons.
- Four surgeons (30%) stressed keeping young children away from dogs.
- Four surgeons shared cautions on certain thread lift uses.
- Four surgeons warned of the dangers of permanent and non-dissolvable fillers.
Five things I would never do as a plastic surgeon
1. Dr. Kevin Sadati
Dr. Kevin Sadati is a board-certified facial plastic surgeon in Newport Beach, California. As such, “there are five things I wouldn’t do,” Sadati says in an August 23rd video since seen 900,000 times on TikTok and Instagram.
- Get a thread lift. (“It can cause irregularities and asymmetry in your face, and it doesn’t last that long.”)
- Get Ultherapy. (It melts fat under the skin, but causes scarring, he says. “When I want to go do a facelift, it’s very difficult to do a facelift on people who have [had] Ultherapy.”)
- Get permanent filler in my face. (“If something goes wrong, it’s going to be a disaster to take those out, and it’s going to cause long-term problems.”)
- Use fillers for a facelift. (“You don’t want to have your cheeks full of filler to get your face lifted.”)
- See a facelift surgeon that isn’t board-certified.
2. Dr. Daniel Gould
Dr. Daniel Gould is a board-certified plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, CA. “Here are five things that I would never do,” he says in an August 8th video since:
- Smoke a vape pen. (“In my training, we saw a lot of patients that would come through with vape pens that had exploded while they were smoking them. So they had terrible injuries to their face, to their hands, [and] to their body…”)
- Ride an e-scooter. (“Why, because I saw many young people, in their 20s, terribly wounded riding these scooters. They fell off from a high center of gravity, broke their leg, needed an amputation, or a special reconstructive surgery.”)
- Ever hold a firework while lighting it. (“We see so many patients with burn injuries, with exploded hands, all those things—very commonly, and this is something that is very difficult to recover from.”)
- Ever let my kid play with a dog. (“I will never ever, ever, ever let my baby play with a dog. I’m gonna wait till my kid’s a little bit older, around the age of 6….”)
- Be operated on by a non board-certified surgeon. (“This is the most important.”)
3. Dr. Mrinalini Sharma
Dr. Mrinalini Sharma is a female plastic surgeon in New Delhi, India. In a September 20th video, she shared with viewers the top five things she would never do as a plastic surgeon:
- Operate on a patient without a thorough preoperative evaluation.
- Facial plastic surgery on anyone under 18.
- Do multiple procedures on a patient in a single day.
- Do a rhinoplasty (nose job) on anyone under 18.
- Operate on someone who smoked recently. (“I would want four weeks of abstinence before performing a procedure on a heavy smoker,” she says.)
4. Nima Shemirani, MD
Dr. Nima Shemirani is a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, California. “Here are five things I would never do, knowing what I know as a doctor and facial plastic surgeon,” he shared, September 5th.
- Go out without sunscreen.
- Live with a deviated septum. (“I, in fact, had a deviated septum surgery when I was 17. Knowing what I know about the importance of breathing, especially getting a good night’s sleep, if you have trouble breathing through your nose, I would definitely get that fixed.”)
- Ride a motorcycle. (“I have worked on so many patients that have been in motorcycle accidents. Even if you’re the perfect driver, especially living in a big city…. I think leisure riding is fine on open roads.”)
- Put my face next to a dog. (“Especially if you have little children….keep them away. Dogs can be very unpredictable. One little bit can cause permanent scarring that can last the rest of your life.”)
- Stop working out.
5. Dr. Jacob Sedgh, M.D.
Dr. Jacob Sedgh is a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon in West Hollywood, California. “Here are the top five things I would never do as a plastic surgeon,” he shared October 7th:
- Put permanent filler in somebody’s face.
- Place threads in the nose.
- Do weird surgeries (“Like fox eye surgery, or non standard things.”)
- Put non-biological implants into the nose. (Silicone, or Gore-Tex for instance)
- Operate on a patient who has unrealistic expectations.
6. Dr. Anthony Youn
Dr. Anthony Youn is a board-certified plastic surgeon in Detroit, Michigan. He says that as a plastic surgeon of 18 years, he would never do the following:
- Put his face into the face of a dog he didn’t know very well. (“I love dogs, I rescue them, and I’ve got two right now,” he says. “But I’ve seen so many people who had chunks of their face ripped off by a dog that they didn’t know well.”)
- Ride a motorcycle. “There’s a reason why we call them ‘donorcycles’ in the hospital.”
- Assume a person is overweight because they are lazy or they eat too much.
- Smoke or vape. (“I can spot a smoker the moment they walk in my office because their skin typically looks older and drier than it should.”)
- Pick the plastic surgeon with the biggest ad. (“In general, the larger the ad, the larger the billboard, the worse the cosmetic surgeon. Choose them based off their reputation.”)
Dr. Youn also shared the cosmetic procedures he would never do:
- Thread lifts. (They’re “not necessarily dangerous,” he says, but “they only last about 6 to 12 months, and they’re really, really expensive.”)
- Asian eyelid surgery. (The procedure adds a fold to the eyelids of patients without one. “I don’t like the idea that you need to have surgery to add a fold to your eyelid to be considered attractive,” he says.)
- CoolSculpting. (“Although it definitely works, there is a small chance that the fat that is treated can actually get thicker. I’ve seen that on a couple of occasions and it’s not pretty.”)
- Facial fillers that aren’t hyaluronic acid, or Sculptra. (“The risks are way too high if it’s improperly injected.”)
7. Dr. Kim Meathrel
Dr. Kim Meathrel is a certified plastic surgeon in Kingston, Ontario. In a September 2nd video, the cosmetic plastic surgeon shared five things she would never do:
- Go outside without sunblock.
- Overfill my lips or cheeks with filler. (“Stretched skin never 100 percent goes back to the way it started and you will regret stretching your face out when you are 50.”)
- Go without a bra. (“Gravity; not your friend. Keep them up.”)
- Have a high sugar diet.
- Smoke or vape. (“Bad for you, bad for your skin, leaves terrible upper lip lines.”)
8. Dr. Daniel Barrett
Dr. Daniel Barrett is a board-certified plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, California. “Here are five things I would never do as a plastic surgeon,” he says in a September 14th video:
- Let kids near any dog. (“I can’t tell you how many nights—I’m in my residency training and I get called in now to fix little kid’s faces or their scalps, when a family dog or someone else’s dog takes a split second to bite their child’s face, their eyelids, their lips off. Trust me. It is traumatic. Even a small dog can cause a lot of damage and that can permanently disfigure your child.”)
- Cook on the front burners if children are around. (“[I spent many months in the burn unit at the LA County hospital and] I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had kids come in who [had] reached up and they grabbed the pot or pan, and they pour hot water or hot grease down on their face, and they cause permanent disfiguring burns to their face…. So always use the back burners when you’re cooking, when there are kids around.”]
- Bargain shop for plastic surgery. (“If you can’t afford it, don’t get it. Don’t go overseas.”)
- Get raw silicone injected anywhere into your body. (“A lot of people do this in people’s garages for buttock augmentation, for facial lip augmentation. It is a permanent disfiguring thing that can happen and if it gets infected, you could die.”)
- Not respect the decision of a plastic surgeon who says “No.”
9. Rod Rohrich
Dr. Rod Rohrich is the immediate past editor-in-chief of the industry’s largest journal, and a board-certified plastic surgeon in private practice in Dallas, Texas. “These are five things I don’t do as a plastic surgeon,” Dr. Rohrich shared in an August 10th video.
- Operate on people that smoke. (“Smokers have a much higher risk of complications.”)
- Operate on people I don’t like. (Plastic surgery is “a long-term relationship. You gotta make sure you like your plastic surgeon, and the same goes for me.”)
- Operate on people that aren’t healthy.
- Operate on a patient with unreal expectations. (“You have to have realistic expectations. That’s why I do the ‘top three goals’ before surgery. What are the top three goals? I want to make sure I can do them.”)
- Crazy stuff. (”Just because you can, does not mean you should. Remember, we’re in the face protection, not witness protection program. Don’t do crazy stuff.”)
10. Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel
Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel is a double board-certified plastic surgeon in Newtown, Massachusetts. “Here are three things I would not do as a facial plastic surgeon,” he shared August 11th:
- Things that aren’t going to make you look good. (“Sometimes people come in and they say do this or that and it’s not going to look good in my opinion; I’m not gonna do it. I have to make sure you get a good look at the end of it all.”)
- Things I don’t know I can achieve great success at, with great safety, and give you a beautiful outcome. We don’t take chances with your appearance.
- Make you look like a mythological creature. (“Don’t come to me for elf ears or a forked tongue.”)
11. Dr. Kelly Killeen, MD, FACS
Dr. Kelly Killeen is a double board-certified plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, CA. “There’s a trend going around for people in different specialties to say the top five things they would never do based on what they’ve seen in their training and their career,” she says in a July 18th video. “As a plastic surgeon, here’s the top five things that I won’t do:”
- Use a table saw. (“I’ve seen way too many table saw injuries come into the emergency room.”)
- Light fireworks while drinking.
- Drive with an arm out the window.
- Use trampolines.
- Ride on ATVs. (“I’ve seen so many brachial plexus injuries,” the doctor says. [“My wife’s organ donor was riding an ATV,” a viewer adds. “That says it all,”)
12. Dr. Raymond Lee
Dr. Raymond Lee is a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon in Newport Beach, California. The surgeon shared his top five things not to do as a facial plastic surgeon in a video, September 1st:
- CO2 laser on anyone with tan or dark skin. (“Can lead to a complication called hyperpigmentation.”)
- A facelift under general anesthesia. (“Twilight sedation; much safer, easier recovery.”)
- A facelift on an active smoker. (“This leads to increased complications of bleeding, infection, and skin necrosis. So you need to stop ideally one month before.”)
- FaceTite or Kybella on someone who wants to do liposuction. (“That creates a lot of internal scar tissue…. It makes that liposuction procedure down the road much harder.”)
- Operate on someone with unrealistic expectations.
13. Dr. Claire Melancon
Dr. Claire Melancon is a board-eligible facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon in New Orleans, Louisiana. “I’m going to tell you five things that I would never do as a facial plastic surgeon,” she says in an August 8 video.
- Get PDO thread rhinoplasty or otoplasty. (“The scarring and risk of extrusion is real, and can cause lasting disfigurement. Not to mention it makes surgical rhinoplasty more difficult.”)
- Get any filler that I cannot dissolve or remove.
- Get lip or eyeliner tattooing. (“Your face changes as you age.”)
- Use Afrin for longer than a couple days.
- Use cheap, heavy chemical sunscreens on my face.