Plastic Surgery: Beyond the Hype Intro

Welcome to Plastic Surgery: Beyond The Hype. I'm Dr. Marcel Daniels, a Board Certified plastic surgeon and I practice at Image Plastic Surgery in Long Beach, California.

I love what I do for a living. But I hate the business I'm in. Sound like a contradiction? Hardly. I take my obligations to my patients very seriously. However, far too many of my peers, do not. In my nearly 20 years of private practice, I have seen the field of plastic and cosmetic surgery devolve into a "Wild West" of "gunslingers" all claiming to be the "fastest draw," and who routinely over promise and under deliver. All at the expense of you, the trusting, public!

Well, to paraphrase the Peter Finch character in the movie "Network," "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" This blog is written with the intent of helping to educate you, the public, on: who is selling you what, how they are doing it, and what steps you can take to ensure you get quality plastic surgery for your hard-earned money. The views expressed here are entirely my own and are not endorsed by the American Society of Plastic Surgery or the American Board of Plastic Surgery... but they should be.

Plastic surgery used to be discrete; something only rich and famous people had, and certainly not something anybody talked about. As I mentioned before, now it's full of colorful "gunslingers" bragging about how many notches they have on their scalpel. It's an increasingly crowded field where pretty much anybody can call themselves a cosmetic surgeon. The cries of "pick me!" get louder, and the marketing is often deceptive and misleading. It's the Wild West all over again and YOU, the public, are the townsfolk getting rustled and hustled!