During the first consulatation Professor Deva will draw from his extensive portfolio of cases built up over a decade of clinical practice to demonstrate an unbiased selection of his results. However he does not place before-and-after style photos on the website because they can be misleading and don’t provide a wide enough range to really demonstrate how consistent a surgeons skills are.
Here are some reasons why clinical photography can be misleading:
1. It is important to provide the same style of photographs of pre and post surgery. Photographs taken with variation of lighting, angle, focal length of the camera lens can make the before photographs look worse and the after-surgery photograph look better than they are in real life.
2. Clinical photographs should be taken at a standard interval following surgery. Some clinical results continue to evolve up to a period of 6 months following surgery, so early results are often misleading as there is enough swelling to obscure irregularities and make the skin look smoother. This is especially important for facial and breast cosmetic surgery.
3. Quality results should be consistently repeated. A broken clock is right twice a day and any surgeon can select a series of good results to post on his/her website. The truest reflection of a surgeons outcomes is to look at series of consecutive cases. In aesthetic surgery, consistency is very important and Professor Deva will be happy to show you a series of his latest surgical results so that you can be sure that his skill is reproducible.
4. Two dimensional photographs do not give you information on volume. For example, in breast augmentation, it is important that photographs are taken at varying angles. Almost all comparisons in breast augmentation look good when they are taken at an oblique angle (approx. 45 degrees). It is therefore important to look at both the front on and side on views in addition to the oblique views to look at the overall result.
5. The surgeons broader view. Whilst a plastic surgeon is given direction by his patients preferences, there is a sense of the surgeons taste and aesthetic that comes through through in a broad range of cosmetic procedures. By viewing a selection of results for procedures that you may not be interested in you can gain an insight into their own personal view of the ideal.
One of Anand’s favourite maxims in cosmetic surgery is “less is more” – It is far better to adhere to natural boundaries of taste and proportion.