SAN ANTONIO — Business is booming for plastic surgeons. They're getting all sorts of requests for different kinds of procedures and a lot of it has to do with the pandemic.
You can blame Zoom for a big part of that. Or if you are a plastic surgeon you can thank Zoom for the extra business. Many of us have had to look at our faces for hours a day, and not everybody liked what they saw, like baggy eyes, wrinkles, and for many a double chin.
"I think the way people have done their meetings, you know, the kind of way they're looking down and they get the little fold under the chin," said Dr. Doohi Lee from the Medical Director of Advanced Surgical Arts in Fort Worth.
"I've done facelifts, eyes, you name it," said Dr. Michael Decherd from the San Antonio Plastic Surgery Institute, who has also seen many mothers coming in for post-pregnancy work.
"Maybe it's a reduction, maybe it's augmentation and maybe it's a lift or whatever, and maybe some lipo is in there," Dr. Decherd said.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says the top 5 cosmetic surgeries in 2020 where nose reshaping and eyelid surgery each with over 352,000 procedures coming is as the top two. Facelift came in third with 234,000 procedures. Many wanted to be thinner, so 211,000 people got liposuction. And coming in fifth breast augmentation with over 193,000 procedures.
Working from home helps with recovery time too.
"And so I instituted a lot of new procedures to kind of take care of those kind of problems without causing a lot of downtime for patients," Dr. Lee said.
Once non-essential procedures were allowed after the first couple of months of the pandemic business for cosmetic surgery has been booming.
"It's just been like drinking water from a fire hose since then," Dr. Decherd said.
"Now people are starting to come out of the woodwork, so to speak," Dr. Lee added.