Steve Laverson, MD - Plastic Surgeon in San Diego, California

Eva Sheie (00:03):
The purpose of this podcast is simple. We want you to get to know your doctor before meeting them in person because you're making a life-changing decision and time is scarce. The more you can learn about who your doctor is before you meet them, the better that first meeting will be. There's no substitute for an in-person appointment, but we hope this comes close. I'm your host, Eva Sheie, and you're listening to Meet the Doctor. Welcome to Meet the Doctor. I'm Eva Sheie, and my guest today is board certified plastic surgeon and also board certified in general surgery, Steve Laverson in San Diego, California. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Laverson (00:44):
Thank you very much, Eva.

Eva Sheie (00:46):
It's so nice to meet you. I actually have had clients in San Diego, one of my longest clients in San Diego over the years, so I actually know the market really well and I think it's such a beautiful place to work and people are wonderful there. And I'm curious, how long have you been in San Diego and what do you think of it?

Dr. Laverson (01:06):
Well, of course we love the weather. We love San Diego. I've been here 30 years and operate Feel Beautiful Plastic Surgery in Sorento Valley, which is right along the beach just to the north of the city, north county.

Eva Sheie (01:20):
And did you ever practice anywhere other than your own facility or did you work at the hospital or what did you do before?

Dr. Laverson (01:27):
Well, I still work at a hospital. Okay, I came out here after my 10 years of training, which included seven years of general surgery, three years of plastic surgery. And then I started here because I have some family here and I did a lot of my training in Los Angeles, but LA was just really crowded. The freeways, I don't have the patience for sitting in that traffic every single day when you want to get somewhere. So we actually wanted a little bit less crowded. LA is great. It's a plastic surgery town, as you can probably know, and I knew a lot of people there because of my training, but we decided to move down here, just, I don't know, as an alternative.

Eva Sheie (02:08):
It was a good choice. I totally approve. Is there anything that you're known for now? You're 30 years in, certainly you've become probably a super specialist in some things.

Dr. Laverson (02:19):
I like to say we specialize in good results. If I can't get somebody a good result, I'll refer them or I won't operate on them. We are known for certain procedures. I mean, I do a lot of local anesthesia lip procedures, lip lift, corner lift. We have patients honestly flying from all over the country for that. And my tummy tuck is unique. I've published about it a little bit, but I need to publish more about it. I like the fitness contour. I don't like the surgical look. We do sculpt these contours that help. I want the woman to look naturally fit and before pregnancy, and we were known for that a little bit. Mommy makeovers. I mean, I think we do a lot of nice things. Our facelift is incredible, our neck lift and our rhinoplasty. We do a lot of rhinoplasty here as well. So we do do different things face, breast and body Eva.

Eva Sheie (03:10):
How did you stumble into doing lips? That's kind of a niche procedure. Was there a story there that you can tell us?

Dr. Laverson (03:18):
Yeah. Well, that's a good question also. Here's what I noticed that I learned from other surgeons and the facelift is a procedure that's done from the sides, but the face ages is mostly in the center, the eyes, the lips, and it's a gravitational kind of thing. And I can show you pictures of if you look at somebody who's young and the same person when they're old, the vertical length of the lip, from the nose to the lip, it elongates. The upper teeth become concealed, the lower teeth become visible. This is an aged look. Part of rejuvenating the face is to create a youthful look and everything's got to be in harmony. You can't do a facelift without fixing the part of the mouth that's also dropped. So we started doing those lip lifts and corner lifts because when the cheek comes down with age, and you can see it on my face, when the cheek comes down with age, it pulls down the corners into a frown.

(04:18):
People think you're sad. The facial expressions communicate. And if the corners are down, it communicates sadness. A lot of these patients, again, how do we learn about the anatomic changes of aging? Just look at patients when they were 25 or 30 years old and the same person when they're 65 or 70 years old, you're going to see those changes and those are the things we try to fix. And one of them is lifting the corners, lifting the lip. So those are the lip things I do. We can also change the shape of the lips with internal procedures. So I got into it just by looking at the effects of aging on the lips and trying to reverse those.

Eva Sheie (05:00):
Do you use any technology for those? I just heard someone talking about lip implants the other day and it had been years since I had heard anyone mentioned lip implants.

Dr. Laverson (05:12):
Well, there are different kind of lip implants. There's absorbable and non-absorbable. I was using the permanent and it's called perma lip from Texas. I know the plastic surgeon who vented that and their silicone strips you put in the lip. And I did that for a while. But honestly, my experience was that there were too many problems and complications associated with it. There is an excellent product out there for volumizing. The lips that's permanent, it's from Denmark, it's 97% water and 3% poly acrylamide hydrogel. The brand name is Aquamid. It is not FDA approved in the United States. I think it should be okay. I think it absolutely should be. It's safe, it's wonderful. It coexists with the tissue very nicely. It's even better than the hydrogel that's used right now. The Restylane, Juvederm because they're temporary, their natural product also, but they go away after a while and you got to keep repeating it. So I like the Aquamid as a permanent lip augmentation. It's not quite an implant. And then there are the other implants. There's Teflon implants. I've used dermis before. I've used a cellular dermal matrix. The stratus or there are different brands, but I've used all sorts of different things in lip, fat tansfer is natural. It's nice for lip augmentation. So there are a variety of choices, but the permanent implants, silicone, I have actually moved away from in my practice.

Eva Sheie (06:42):
You also said that you're doing tummy tuck a little differently and I'm very curious about that.

Dr. Laverson (06:48):
Well, that's another thing I like to put myself in the position of patients. For example, woman comes in, she's had several children stretched out by pregnancy weight fluctuations. There's loose skin, there may be a bulge, she's lost tone. She can't do sit-ups anymore. Sometimes there's a hernia of the belly button, c-section scars, she may or may not like. So I've got to get into the woman's mind and figure out what kind of end result she wants because that's what she comes here for. She doesn't come here for surgery. She's coming here for a look that she has in her mind that she either used to have or wants. And where do I go for that Eva? I'll tell you where I go. I go to look at the models. I go to the bikini fitness competitors, what does their belly look like? And from that I design my fitness tummy tuck and it's gentle contours that go with the woman's body that reflect the underlying anatomy of the muscles and how they come together. And I do things in the operating room to recreate that contour. You can see 'em on my website before and afters, but I try to sculpt those in and I do it by a variety of sort of technical things in the operating room.

Eva Sheie (08:03):
That athletic look, I live in Austin. It's definitely been the sort of trend here over the last year or two, which was proceeded by a very exaggerated look, much bigger behinds and breast implants get bigger and smaller and bigger and smaller. And I'll never forget when I was in high school, a friend's mom was on the committee that chose the Minnesota Timberwolves cheerleaders and she was the first person to ever tell me that they chose the girls based on their breast size. And it was either a big year or a small year, they would all be smaller, they would all be big. And it stuck with me. It was like why would breast size be something that trends up and down? But 25 years later, of course I can see that that's happening. So where are we now? What do you see in San Diego? What do you think is happening?

Dr. Laverson (08:57):
We see a variety of things. San Diego is a town, there's a lot of outdoor people here. People come here because they like the outdoor lifestyle. And so the women, if I had to classify, of course there are differences, but if I had to categorize San Diego, I would say that in general, the women like the outdoors, they tend to be more athletic. They don't want to be burdened by huge heavy breasts, so they just want breasts that fit their body, I would say. And then most of the women, at least that come into my practice, they want something that's proportionate with their body that's believable, that it doesn't take attention away from their face or the other features. They like having the curves, the feminine shape, but they don't want something that doesn't fit with their body, I would say.

Eva Sheie (09:45):
Do you see the size change kind of trending up or down based on what people are coming in and asking for? I think you're saying they don't really change much in San Diego.

Dr. Laverson (09:54):
Some women still want big if they're curvy and they're what I call mesomorphic, they're all different body types. I mean the thin small woman, if she wants harmony and proportion, she's going to want smaller breast implants. But some women are just naturally, they have curves and big implants look natural on them. So I'll put bigger implants in those women. I do Eva, my process, I have a process. I don't decide what size women get. They decide they do. Okay, I have a computer. I can 3D simulate. I also have breast implants in the office. They try 'em in a sports bra in my three-way mirror and look at different sizes how it's going to look on their body and we go with what they choose, what the woman chooses.

Eva Sheie (10:40):
I think another thing that could be at play sometimes, and the example in my head is specifically from San Diego, is that if you are known for getting natural proportional, athletic looking results, then you attract the patient who wants that and someone down the street, a colleague or a competitor may do oversize, exaggerated operations all the time, and therefore the people who want that end up going in that direction. So it's a little bit of a self-fulfilling thing sometimes.

Dr. Laverson (11:11):
That's absolutely true. That's a good observation. And it's an accurate observation. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (11:17):
I spent a lot of years working on helping doctors figure out how to get more reviews back when that was a much bigger problem, 3, 4, 6, 7 years ago. And I used to keep a folder of good bad reviews because sometimes bad reviews were the best thing you could get. And one of my favorites said, this doctor refused to give me stripper boobs and I would never come back here again. And so when I got the call about the doctor being upset about this, I said, this is the best kind of review you could possibly get because if you don't want to do that, then anyone else who thinks you're going to do that is not going to call you. So we left it up. We didn't take that one down.

Dr. Laverson (12:01):
Yeah. It's aesthetic sense. I try to go with the patient's aesthetic sense. If they want something I think is not advisable, I'll of course tell 'em what the downsides are. But in the end, Eva, I like patients to have control over their own body and I'll more or less do what they want. As long as I've told 'em what the downside is and documented that we've had that discussion, then yeah, I'll do what they want in general.

Eva Sheie (12:25):
Do you ever have to say no?

Dr. Laverson (12:27):
Oh, we do say no all the time. Listen, patients are very special here and I'm not going to do anything of it either, if I can't deliver what a patient wants or I do, I think they're fine the way they are. And I think the risk exceeds the benefit of doing a procedure, which happens sometimes. I get these young, beautiful patients in here all the time. I think it's almost sacrilegious to go in and start changing things because they look so good the way they are. They may not see that in the mirror, but I feel like, listen, if they really want to do it, they can find somebody to do it for 'em. But I don't want to do something that's going to either make them look worse, that might turn out not good, that they might regret later. Because I've also been in the position, Eva, where I have listened to patients and done something against my better judgment. And it turns out later I was right and the patient is either upset and they forget that we had the discussion that they wanted it despite my admonitions and reluctance. So each case has to be managed individually and carefully. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (13:30):
Do you think social media is having that impact on younger women and causing them to think differently about how they look?

Dr. Laverson (13:37):
I think absolutely, absolutely. Social media plays a role. What do people post on social media? The best things, the best. And of course there's so much software to change things anyway out there, so people see things that aren't real. And on top of that, they see only the best photos, the best shots. So yeah, I think it does have an influence, definitely.

Eva Sheie (14:01):
It's interesting times. I don't think that our phones are going away. I think we are going to have to figure out how to do a better job showing people what's possible and real. When you were starting out, was there a time where you knew you were going to become a plastic surgeon? Did something happen that led you in that direction? How did you end up here?

Dr. Laverson (14:24):
Well, so that's a good question. It's a long story. I was in medical school actually, when did I graduate? 1983. So after medical school, you decide what specialty is during medical school, you sort of get a chance to see what each of the specialties does. And Eva, I was always an artist growing up. I mean, I was the guy that in grade school in high school, if they needed artwork for an event, I mean they give it to Laverson, do it, the poster or the cartoon or whatever it was. And when I was in high school, I got odd jobs doing artwork, doing, I used to paint on the side of vans and I did this and that for in the community signs and all that sort of stuff.

Eva Sheie (15:04):
Where was this?

Dr. Laverson (15:05):
In Maryland.

Eva Sheie (15:06):
Okay.

Dr. Laverson (15:08):
So when I got to medical school, I was in, one of my first rotations in the third year was internal medicine. And it happened to be the VA Hospital Veterans Administration Hospital in Baltimore. And I noticed that most of the patients, Eva, we weren't really getting them better. We were treating them. If they had heart failure, we would treat 'em with digoxin, with medications. If they had diabetes, we'd treat 'em with insulin. And if they had cancer, we'd be giving 'em this chemotherapy that caused all sorts of horrible side effects, but a lot of times we wouldn't save 'em. It was sadness. And I'm a happy guy. I want to be happy. I want to improve things. And when I was on internal medicine one time, there was a really sick patient and my chief resident said when we had run out of medications, we had run out of things to do.

(15:59):
He said, call surgery. And I thought about that and said, well, is that what you do when somebody really, you're at the end of your rope, you call a surgeon. I want to be the surgeon. And then when I got into surgery, I realized, oh my god, plastic surgery is artistic. You need an aesthetic sense. You need some sort of three dimensional vision of what can be done. And finally I realized this is for me, there's something for me in this. And that's how I chose plastic surgery. It matched my natural aptitude, and so I pursued that.

Eva Sheie (16:36):
And the rest is history. When you're not at work, what can we find you doing? Still art?

Dr. Laverson (16:44):
Not really. I expressed that here. I incorporate a lot of artistic elements in my practice. For example, rhinoplasty, sketches. I will sketch it for the patient with my hands before and that's what I'll have on the board, what we've agreed on. That's what I go to as the goal. I do a lot of things here artistically with my hand, but when I'm not here, I try to do fitness. I try to be outdoors. I mean I love the outdoors. We'll ride bikes, hiking, things like that, and try to be with my wife who's been behind me and sacrificed all these years. I've been away from home. I'm still away from home. Weekends. I mean, today is what, Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday I was in the hospital doing surgeries on patients. So I try to be a family guy too and spend time with my wife.

Eva Sheie (17:33):
If someone's listening today and they want to get to know you better or they want to come see you, where should they look for you online.

Dr. Laverson (17:39):
Feelbeautiful.com. Just like it's spelled all one word. Feelbeautiful. It's the website right behind me, FEELBEAUTIFUL, you can see some of my work on there in the gallery and send an inquiry. It doesn't cost anything to answer questions. I also answer questions on realself.com occasionally, and you could call Cherise who knows what I do. She'll answer questions as well. It's (858) 295-4001 is the phone number.

Eva Sheie (18:12):
Thank you.

Dr. Laverson (18:13):
Thank you, Eva.

Eva Sheie (18:14):
I'll make sure I put all of those links in the show notes so they're easy to find. And I sure appreciate you taking the time to talk to us this afternoon.

Dr. Laverson (18:21):
Well, I appreciate your podcast Meet the Doctor. Thank you very much, Eva.

Eva Sheie (18:29):
If you are considering making an appointment or are on your way to meet this doctor, be sure to let them know you heard them on the Meet the Doctor podcast. Check the show notes for links including the doctor's website and Instagram to learn more. Are you a doctor or do you know a doctor who'd like to be on the Meet the Doctor podcast? Book your free recording session at Meet the doctor podcast.com. Meet the Doctor is Made with Love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis T-H-E-A-X-I-S.io.