Should children have plastic surgery?

I recently read that a New York plastic surgeon would ask his younger patients (children & teens) to draw a picture of how they see themselves.  

This self portrait may be revealing to a child’s self-image – a view into his or her world.  

Many times young children will be brought into my Fort Myers plastic surgery practice for ear surgery, ie. their ears protrude too much.  In these cases I will ask the parents to leave the room and ask the child how they feel about their ears.  

In other words, am I doing the surgery for the child and their self esteem – their image or their parents?  It is important to make this distinction.  Many times a physical deformity can be damaging to a child’s self esteem.  

I remember when I was in high school and had to wear glasses.  Wow!  What a shock – what an eye opener – no pun intended.  I was now 4 eyes.  Pretty devastating to one’s ego and self esteem.  

A child becomes the brunt of jokes, ridicule or as we like to now call it now, a victim of bullying.  In many cases surgery can go a long way to helping correct not only the physical problem but, more important, the child’s psyche or self esteem.

New Weapon in the Fight Against Breast Cancer

A company called First Warning Systems Inc. in Reno, Nevada has developed a new technology to aid in the EARLY detection of breast cancer. 

Breast cancer cells need to establish a good blood supply to continue to grow.  The development of new blood supply to a tumor creates a measurable temperature change.  As a breast lesion goes from normal to malignant, the thermal fingerprint of the lesion will change as well.  In order for a breast cancer to be large enough to be felt or palpated it must go through 30 tumor doubling times.  After 30 doubling times the lesion maybe 1 cm. which is small.  

The goal of the First Warning Breast System is to pick up breast cancers even before they reach 1 cm. in size.  Different types have different  thermal patterns.  By utilizing this new technology one can help identify early malignancies from benign breast growths.  

As a Florida breast surgeon, I need to do a little more research but it is exciting.