THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED LAST WEEK:
I have become pretty well known for my work and dedication of my Plastic Surgery practice to performing Transgender/Gender Confirmation type procedures (most notably FTM Top Surgery and also ManSculpture). Over the past many years, I have been contacted by television producers, film creators, magazines, researchers, book editors, software developers, government agencies, military branch representatives, politicians, therapists, and many different types of physicians all in regard to my notability and degree of expertise on FTM Top Surgery and Transgender issues. Last week I was contacted by a Plastic Surgeon who had some questions about my technique for FTM Top Surgery. I asked them what they wanted to know, and they proceeded to tell me they were about to perform their very first FTM Top Surgery on a patient. I asked them if they have ever seen the surgery before, and their response was “No, but I will be doing my first case tomorrow…”
I immediately went to their website, and they were already advertising ‘Expert in FTM Top Surgery’
Now please understand, to be considered an ‘Expert’ in anything, you have to have extensive experience with the topic. Professionally I did not consider myself an expert in FTM Top Surgery until I personally performed a few hundred FTM Top Surgeries, and as of now after personally performing several thousand FTM Top Surgeries I think I can not only say that I am an ‘Expert’, but I am one of the few Plastic Surgeons currently practicing who can say they have mastered the technique of FTM Top Surgery. There are many great and compassionate doctors who are treating patients in the Transgender community, and although there may be many new physicians wanting to help, they do a great disservice to the community at large when they misrepresent themselves as an ‘Expert’ when they are not even a ‘Novice’.
Please ask your Surgeon how many FTM Top Surgeries they have the ever performed. Ask them how many they have done this year. Ask them if they’ve done 10, 20, 50, or 100 cases. Ask them if they’ve done over a thousand. Then ask them if they have performed several thousand. Not many surgeons can claim they’ve done over a thousand of these surgeries, not even several thousand. My point, is for you to find a physician who has TRUE AND EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE performing FTM Top Surgery as this is not an easy surgery to perform.
If you were required to have open-heart surgery for coronary artery disease, would you go to the doctor who has never performed the surgery before? Would you go to the doctor who has only performed 10, 20, 50, or 100? Probably not, in fact you would probably seek out the doctor who has performed more than a 1,000 open-heart surgeries, correct? Then why would you go to someone for your FTM Top Surgery who has little to no experience?
You want the best and most experienced Plastic Surgeon performing your surgery. You want someone who is a Master in Surgery of their specialty. You want a Plastic Surgeon who is a Master in FTM Top Surgery, not a ‘Novice’ in FTM Top Surgery. You deserve to have the best care by the best physicians in the world. There are only a handful of Master Surgeons, in the United States, who can honestly make a claim to have performed over 1,000 FTM Top Surgeries, and I am proud to be one of them who has performed this number of FTM Top Surgeries multiple times.
Every week I perform several telephone consultations with patients who have had their FTM Top Surgery performed by other doctors who claim to be ‘Experts in FTM Top Surgery’, and these patients are now seeking my services to fix their botched surgeries. I personally, and I’m sure the other true experts in FTM Top Surgery, are heartbroken when we hear these stories and would hope that patients will make the best decision to choose a Qualified and Experienced Surgeon for their FTM Top Surgery.
I really hope this information can help some of you during your transition. Please feel free to call us just to ask questions too. We want you to have the safest and best transition surgery possible. So do not hesitate to call us at (954) 752-7842.
-Dr. G