Dr. Farhad Rafizadeh offers you his extensive experience of 35 years.
Dr. Rafizadeh will be honored with 35 years of service award by Morristown Medical Center in July of 2019. We asked Dr. Rafizadeh who has been performing plastic and reconstructive surgery since July of 1984 in Morristown N.J. about his practice and how he remains so committed, engaged, interested and involved after all these years.
Here is his response:
First of all, I love what I do and enjoy interacting with my patients very much. Besides, I keep physically active with tennis almost every day, eat well and exercise. I also keep my workload under control and only do what I truly enjoy and what gives me the most satisfaction.
My practice has evolved through many phases. It started with reconstructive plastic surgery that included major facial trauma before airbags became a standard feature in cars, to breast reconstruction after mastectomy, popularizing the living tissue (TRAM flap) breast reconstruction, and has led up to exclusively cosmetic surgery of the face, breast, and body. “I have three passions, he says; plastic surgery, art, and tennis. I go to many national and international conferences to keep current with the latest developments in cosmetic surgery. I am so fortunate to be in perfect health and to be able to enjoy doing what I am passionate about.
Here is what gets me going:
First, obtaining great results and having satisfied patients is a constant positive reinforcement. Second, sticking to doing what really works and staying away from methods that produce minimal and questionable results, where it is hard to tell a difference between before and after the procedure.
There are non-invasive techniques that really work. Things like Botox and Dysport reduce active muscle related wrinkles and raise the eyebrows or the corners of the mouth. Fillers like Restylane and Radiesse increase lost volume in the face and fill certain furrows.
Surgery, however, is my art and passion. This is what I have spent a lifetime perfecting and I am lucky to be in great shape and be able to use my extensive experience to benefit my patients. This vast experience makes my surgery effortless. The right judgments and decisions come naturally, and positive responses from patients make my work pleasurable. I truly enjoy my life now. I see patients and operate during the days and play tennis almost every day in the evenings and weekends.
I enjoy doing facial rejuvenation with procedures like face and neck lifts which serve as the foundation for a younger face. These are often combined with upper and lower blepharoplasty to get rid of bags, loose skin and in worse cases festoons. Brow lifts are important to keep the overall facial harmony and balance in many cases. Let us not forget my favorite procedure, the lip lift, which makes the face younger and prettier. When I started doing this procedure and combining it with my facelifts 10 years ago, most plastic surgeons didn’t know it was a viable option and were discouraging patients from doing it. I think I had a role, along with a handful of other plastic surgeons, in making this operation popular around the country. I did so by educating patients about the procedure and by receiving great reviews on sites like Realself, where I was honored with a 100/500 Hall Of Fame Award.
These operations are the gold standard of facial rejuvenation surgery and will always remain the best option for anyone who is serious about making a difference in their looks.
Additionally, fat grafting to the face regenerates the lost volume and helps to get more natural and youthful results.
I have made my facial surgery as safe and minimally invasive as possible, performing 95% of the cases under local anesthesia with moderate sedation in the operating room with a specialized monitoring nurse. I believe this is the most effective and safest way to do facial plastic surgery and is the way of the future.
With extensive experience in plastic surgery of the breasts from reconstruction to reduction, lift and augmentation, I continue to be asked to do breast surgery and get superior results, while often correcting work done by other doctors. Safety is the number one concern. This is why I introduced the Ideal Implant as an alternative to silicone implants to our area a few years ago. This is a saline implant with an internal layered structure that makes it feel like silicone, yet it offers the safety and the peace of mind of a saline implant, not requiring an MRI every two years to rule out a silent rupture.
Arm lifts, tummy tucks, and liposuction are the other routine procedures that I do.
I truly believe that using my 35 years of experience in plastic surgery allows me to offer value to my patients that are hard to beat.