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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.If you’re thinking about having cosmetic surgery and starting your shopping process, you’re going to be confronted with a lot of acronyms and you may feel like you’ve been dropped into a bowl of alphabet soup. Trying to make sense of who is who and what is what in the wide world of cosmetic surgery isn’t easy. Between your friends, advertising, and the popular press, you can gather lots of good information, but unfortunately, you’ll hear some things that are either misleading or downright wrong. Misinformation abounds in the field of cosmetic surgery. You need to play detective to get to the truth.
Shopping may or may not be your thing, but when you’re shopping for cosmetic surgery, you better know what you’re doing or you could really endanger yourself. You need to shop intelligently after first finding out how to proceed. You need recommendations or leads, and you must get estimates of the cost so you can budget. You have to find a good surgeon and explore your surgical options. This may sound like a lot of work, but spending your time finding out how to shop for a surgeon is a lot better than spending time regretting your decision.
If you want to find a good surgeon, you have to educate yourself. You have to make sense of certification so that you can evaluate the doctors you’ll visit. Be on the lookout for someone well educated, properly trained, board-certified, and experienced in the procedure you’ve decided on. You want to be sure that your surgery is being performed in a safe setting with an appropriate anesthesia provider. You also want to choose a capable patient-care team to see you through the preparation and recovery process.
More importantly, you’ll have to determine the risk-to-benefit ratio. It sounds scientific and tough to do, but really it isn’t. Every surgery has risk factors, but every surgery also benefits the patient in some way. As an intelligent person, you’ll want to know about the risks and weigh the benefits — in other words, become an informed consumer — before finally making your decision.
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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.