‘Social Life’ Drives Women To Plastic Surgery 30% Of Patients Are Men

WOMEN strive to be more beautiful in today’s increasingly glossed-over world of super models and movie stars. Dr Mohamed Yehia, a plastic surgeon, conversed with the Arab Times on the need for women to be physically better and how plastic surgeries can improve their self-confidence and their image in society.
Women in the region seek to enhance their pulchritude for a variety of reasons, not least of them the need to satisfy husbands, the doctor notes. Women try to live up to the male conceptions of a perfect woman, and in the search for that ideal structure subject themselves to surgeries to sculpt their bodies, adding and subtracting flesh to please their man. The doctor also sheds light on family machinations that are at play such as jealousy between sisters-in-law that induce them to go for plastic surgery in a wanton race to outdo each other in physical beauty.

Interestingly, it is not only women who are willing to go under the scalpel to enhance physical looks, but men too. If women go for breast enhancement, men go for quite the opposite reason, breast reduction. This, Yehia deems, is a big problem in men and liposuction is the solution. Baldness is another problem that men frequently seek remedy for. But Yehia cannot satisfy all his patients, especially when some of them are in greater need of psychological treatment than plastic surgery. Read on, and also find out about the latest developments in plastic surgery.

Question: How important is plastic surgery to today’s modern society?
Answer: Plastic surgery is needed as a result of three aspects that impact people in a society – social effects, self-related importance and family effects. Within the societal effects there are the media effects that mostly impact women. Plastic surgery is very important to females mostly. Everyday you see models, you see singers, and you see actors and all of them are addicts to plastic surgery. Therefore they influence other people in a society.
Usually the female likes to imitate. She likes to imitate her friend, her mom, her niece and so on. She also tries to imitate these famous people you see on TV. She might like a certain look, hairstyle, nose, face or buttocks, so she might ask to do the same. This is the media effect; it drives the female to plastic surgery. Especially after the advancement of satellite channels, there are a lot of cultures invading us – Arab, Western and Asian as well.

Social life is also related to media but more concise. I mean its effects come from inside the family and within one certain society mostly. For example, the brother of a woman got married and his wife is very beautiful. She will get jealous of that and try to be like her.
Regarding self-related importance, all females usually worry about their marital life. A woman is always trying to keep her man at home. Some of them think that the way to keep her husband home and preserve her marriage is through plastic surgery. She thinks: “I should give him bigger breasts, sexier waist, more stylish hair or a younger face.” This is self-related; the woman acquires self-confidence this way.
Even after a divorce, a lot of females are totally devoted to plastic surgery. The woman thinks she does not have self-confidence or there is a problem with her so that is why her husband has left. She wants to look more beautiful than before, even if she is not looking for another marriage, in order to regain her self-confidence.

As related to family importance, some men are usually attracted to their wives after plastic surgery. For example, during a dinner or social party a man checks out other women and tells his wife: “You see, she has very nice eyes, I like her make up,” or “you see, she has bigger breasts.” They say those things. A lot of divorce cases are stopped after plastic surgery. The husband tells his wife: “You have small breasts, I need bigger breasts.” Then if the wife comes to me for augmentation or mammaplasty, she may preserve her home.
Even totally covered women undergo plastic surgeries because there are parties with only women, with her friends and relatives where they are not covered. This is related to the society importance as I’ve discussed before. She should have a lot of jewelry, a lot of make up, very good hairstyles and clothes. This is the way of all societies; they urge their women to be more beautiful.
According to cultures, Arab cultures like curvy women with big breasts and buttocks. Body shape and make-up is a culture. You will never see the type of make-up worn by women in Western countries. But they like that here and we should respect it.

Q: Are there any cultural clashes between beautifying ones-self and Kuwait’s conservative society?
A: There aren’t any clashes. If you’re talking about the covered or the conservative part of society, women are only conservative in mixed group settings with men and women. However, inside her home and private parties she is not conservative, she should be beautiful inside. Women can do a lot of plastic surgery procedures just for their husbands and a lot of men welcome that and appreciate it.

Q: What are the most common procedures demanded in Kuwait?
A: Because of obesity, liposuction is the most demanded procedure. It means the removal of excess fat. The fat is mainly removed from the abdomen and flanks to get more curves and slimmer waist. There is also fat transfer into the face and legs because here they don’t like thin legs or small buttocks. So we do liposuction, body contouring, sculpturing of the waist, making the abdomen or the tummy smaller, but using these fats to augment or to increase the volume of other parts of the body such as the legs or the buttocks.
Other procedures include breast augmentation, but not breast reduction. There is also rhinoplasty, which is surgery that is done on the nose to improve the appearance and or function of the nose. Anti-aging surgeries are also common and done by women who have wrinkles or redundant skin. Face-lifts, buttocks and clinic procedures are very common in Kuwait to get rid of aging.

Q: How many patients do you estimate you get per month?
A: We get about 500 patients per month who do different procedures. The patients are mostly Kuwaiti but we have about 100 patients per month who are non-Kuwaiti. We have Asian females, Lebanese, Syrian, American, Canadian and Australian. So about 20% of patients we get per month are non-Kuwaiti. The Kuwaiti female loves plastic surgery; she loves beauty so she does the most work.
It is very easy for the Kuwaiti female to be an addict to plastic surgery. She searches everywhere and it is never the first consultation with me. It is never the first procedure for her with me, maybe she did liposuction outside and she is going to correct it again. Maybe she did rhinoplasty outside and she is coming to do other procedures with me and so on.

Q: Do you get male patients as well?
A: About 30% of patients are men. They mostly come to remedy baldness or gynecomasty, which are big sized breasts in males. It is a very big problem. So we do liposuction.

Q: What are the approximate costs of doing a plastic surgery procedure in Kuwait?
A: You know plastic surgery is a fantastic surgery; it is fantasy so it is quite costly. However plastic surgery procedures in Kuwait are much cheaper than in USA. It is about half the price. For example, for liposuction, if we are going to do your abdomen, your flanks and your arms in a single session it is going to cost about KD 1,500. In the USA it costs about $10,000.
Also in the USA there are many rigid procedures to be undertaken before a procedure, you sign papers of high risk consent and the prospective of the surgery because of insurance and legal issues. The doctors and surgeons in the USA are highly protected. The process is much easier and less complicated in Kuwait. The consent is easy and much cheaper here and our standards and quality are the same as in the USA. We don’t do any procedures or use any equipments or injectibles or implants without FDA (Food and Drug Association) approval.

Q: Is there a difference between reconstructive surgery and cosmetic surgery?
A: Plastic surgery is sub-branched into two main divisions – aesthetic surgery or cosmetic surgery and reconstructive surgery. The aesthetic or cosmetic surgery deals with beauty – body sculpting, breast size, nose shape, lips, facial wrinkles, anti-aging procedures, bat ears and hair transplantation. The reconstructive surgeries deal with congenital anomalies such as birth problems.
Some people are born with six fingers on one or the two hands, we call it Polydactyly. So a plastic surgeon will remove one of these six fingers, which is reconstructive surgery. Any birth problems related to hands or the face and so on as well as problems resulting from road traffic accidents or burning are called reconstructive surgeries.
I am specialized in cosmetic surgery. Reconstructive surgeries are mainly done through universities or governmental hospitals because they are very costly.

Q: How do you assess a patient’s needs when they come to you for a consultation?
A: First of all we check the general health of the patient and her health and surgical history, whether she has done any previous surgeries related to bone, abdominal surgeries or bariatric surgeries that are related to morbid obesity and body reduction such as gastric sleeve and gastric bypassing. A lot of patients suffer from redundant skin after bariatric surgeries because they’ve lost a lot of weight and don’t have tight skin. Therefore plenty of surgeries are done on them to remove this excess skin.
We ask the patients about previous surgeries, past illnesses, whether they have chronic medical diseases such as liver or hypertension problems. All these are the main measures we do to decide whether the patient is a good candidate for surgery or not.

Second, we assess the demands of the patient, if they are realistic and achievable or not. Some patients have unpredictable demands. For example, a patient can ask for a smaller nose while her face is very big, so it is not realistic to have a smaller nose. Some patients ask for a face lift when they are very young and are not in need of it. We reject those patients because otherwise they will never be satisfied.
Some patients need psychological consultations before plastic surgeries. This is done in Western countries mostly but I cannot ask a patient to do that here. They will be offended. There is a disease called Body Morphic Disorder, which results in patients who are usually young, female, single and near to 40 years of age. They don’t like their bodies and constantly ask for body contouring, facial jobs and so on when they are in no need of these procedures. In reality they just don’t like their bodies and their mirror images. So these patients need psychological consultation. In plastic surgery you can find one in every ten patients like that.

So these types of patients should be rejected because they can never be satisfied and can cause you lots of problems then go to other doctors and cause them problems. That is part of the assessment; we can identify these problems through asking lots of questions and listening to the way the patient answers. These patients hesitate a lot and do not really know what their demands are; she wants to do something but doesn’t know what it is. She totally depends on the doctor to capture her imagination.
After the consultation we assess the procedure, advise the patients and inform them of when the surgery can take place and for how long they are going to be in the hospital and what the complications are if there are any, how they will be dealt with and what the recovery period is. There are also a lot of papers to read and to sign. The consent is in two parts – the anesthesia consent with the anesthesia doctor and the surgical consent where all the possible complications are mentioned.

Q: What are the most common risks of plastic surgery procedures?
A: The first risk of all surgical procedures is the local and general anesthesia risk. Allergies are the most common; if a patient has an allergy to a certain drug we change this drug. Bleeding is also a risk; if bleeding cannot be controlled sometimes we use supplementary fluids. But there are plenty of specific complications for every procedure. Actually the main complication is in satisfaction; the patient does not like the results of the procedure.

Q: What are the latest developments in plastic surgery and what do you expect in the near future?
A: The latest development in my opinion is Stem Cell usage. Stem Cell is a type of cell that has the power to differentiate into any type of cell. These cells already exist in the blood and when we take a sample of the blood we can collect these cells and inject it into your face, for example, to give you a better look with younger cells and more collagen production. Stem Cells also stimulate hair follicles to produce more hair.
Cloning is also another development. It is a type of genetic engineering procedure done especially on bald people. You can take three, four or five hair and clone them to be put on the head for thicker hair. So far, however, it is not available for public use but it is slowly booming.

The Cosmetic Surgery Clinic, Maidan Hawally/Salmiya, Kuwait.

7th & 8th Floor, Virginia Clinic, Abdulla Al Fadaallah St.

Tel.: (965) 2 562 50 30
Fax : (965) 563-7685

Dr Mohamed Yehia Al-Nady MB, BCh, MSc, MD plastic
Cosmetic Plastic and Reconstructive Microsurgery
The Cosmetic Surgery Clinic, Kuwait
MBBCh in Medical Surgery – Cairo, Egypt, 1998
MSc in General Surgery – Cairo, Egypt, 2002
MSc in Plastic Surgery – Germany, 2005
PhD in Plastic Surgery – Belford University, 2009

Dr Adel Quttainah MB, BAO, BCh, FRCS(C) Plast.

LWDLIK - A little research I'm doing LOL :O)