Practice advisor
Major benefits possible for teen patients Jeffrey Rosenthal, MD, chief of plastic surgery at Bridgeport (CT) Hospital, has worked with many teenagers and young adults and agrees that these patients can be limited in their ability to focus, their willingness to discuss body image, and their comprehension of the important issues involved. “I have to drag information out of them more,” he says. “Some are very willing to talk about it, but some are quite sensitive about their body image and not comfortable talking about it with a stranger. They tend not to be as expressive as adults. You have to be very concerned with how you approach them, what you say to them, how you touch them.”
Rosenthal also sends some patients to an adolescent psychologist before approving the procedure to make sure they understand the pros and cons of the surgery. Clearly, some common cosmetic enhancements on young patients are inappropriate, Rosenthal says. Providing Botox or fillers for a teenager would be “reprehensible,” he adds. However, he also notes that some cosmetic improvements can have a significant positive effect on young people. “I’ve done rhinoplasty on young men and women and then had their parents come back and tell me that the child is more confident, their schoolwork is better, they’re just radically transformed,” he says. “I’ve also had young people who had to stop smoking and drinking before surgery, and then they never started up again. They saw that they could stop.”
