Times are changing, and the stigma around plastic surgery is slowly disappearing. With Mother’s Day approaching, a cosmetic procedure may even be the perfect gift for your mother if she was contemplating it for a while. Once you decide on a procedure, however, it’s crucially important to find the right doctor for the job and to be fully aware of the procedure you want to get done. Dr. Maged Rizkallah, who is no stranger to eniGma, is undoubtedly an expert on the ins and outs of plastic surgery in Egypt. With his superior education and extensive practical experience at his booming Sculpture Clinic, he is highly respected and is considered one of Egypt’s top plastic surgeons. We caught up with Dr. Rizkallah to discuss the dos and don’ts of plastic surgery and to get his advice on how to evaluate your options when you are trying to find the right plastic surgeon for what you want to get done.
What should patients look for when researching for doctors?
Mainly, you should check the before and after of the doctors’ procedures and you should also research the feedback from their patients. Some people search for doctors through social media. Personally, I don’t do social media campaigns or anything like that, because I believe that it gets you the wrong kind of patients. It’s definitely better to deal with patients who come to you through word of mouth. They ask specific questions about the procedure to be done, how it is done and how much it costs. In contrast, social media campaigns bring you patients from all over the place, with different cultures. For example, some of these patients try to negotiate the prices and others bring you pictures for reference and are hard to deal with, because they don’t have proper expectations or any idea about what they want. These social media patients or “window-shopping patients” don’t always necessarily look for quality or make sure the doctor they go to is the best. That’s why they are so different from the patients that come through word of mouth.
Do you ever receive patients who are hesitant? And how do you deal with them?
I explain the procedure and ask them to go home and think about it or read more about it; and if they aren’t hesitant anymore, they are more than welcome to come back. I don’t charge them just for consultation, because if the patient is not convinced, they won’t like the results no matter what. That’s the mentality of a lot of patients. There’s also this stigma around cosmetic surgery, especially with the older generation, that if you have never gotten work done, then it’s better; even though you could look much better with just a few touch ups. The whole idea is that when you take care of yourself at an early age, you need less work when you are older.
Where do you see your Sculpture Clinic in five or 10 years?
I’m thinking of expanding all over Egypt. I want to do visits in other provinces, as the quality of services there is not good. We lack knowledge here in Egypt. My dream for the next five or 10 years is to impart knowledge by teaching doctors how to do it right. Better education for doctors, and patients too, is what is needed right now. It makes a lot of difference when you get an educated patient rather than a clueless one. So, we also need to construct a platform to educate patients. I know that people can use the internet to get information, but I’m aiming to do something much simpler for patients. I’m trying to do that on Instagram. For example, when I post about a procedure, I write about the kind of anesthetic that I used and the downtime after that, etc. That way patients become more educated.