Our experience with combined procedures in aesthetic plastic surgery.

The authors report on the possibility of carrying out combined procedures for aesthetic surgery. They pinpoint the conditions necessary for the success of these techniques: surgeon, surgical team, anesthesiologist, and patient should fulfill some requirements that are indispensable. Preoperative and postoperative technical details are presented together with the methodology used for the most important associated procedures. The advantages of these techniques are a more complete patient satisfaction owing to the simultaneous correction of her or his multiple aesthetic problems, decreased hospitalization length and costs (if compared with multistaged surgical corrections), and decreased doctor and patient time investment. No important difference as far as general clinical complications or the aesthetic results were noticed after these procedures. The importance of a qualified team approach is underlined as a condition sine qua non. Otherwise, these techniques would be extremely difficult and risky. Data on personal experience are given, and finally, the authors emphasize the fact that combined procedures for aesthetic surgery are only a possibility that can be performed when all the basic principles and conditions are strictly respected, not a treatment of choice.