A patient came into our Beverly Hills practice recently to ask about having a cosmetic rhinoplasty and help with breathing issues inside her nose.

She also mentioned she wanted liposuction of various bodily locations.

Solution? One session in the operating room with two cosmetic plastic surgeons in attendance.

For the patient, that means one charge for the operating room, one fee for the anesthesiologist and – most importantly for the busy career mom patient – a single recovery period.

But don’t get the idea both cosmetic surgeons operate at once. Liposuction requires quite a bit of jiggling, pushing and shoving of the long, fat removing wand.

However, a cosmetic rhinoplasty is defined by small, precise movements resulting in a better-looking nose fitting the patient’s face and flattering the profile. So, the rhinoplasty was done first.

          (See some rhinoplasty before and after pictures.)

The nasal part of the dual procedure was even a little more delicate because of some inside-the-nose breathing blockages.

It turned out her septum – the paper-thin bone and cartilage wall dividing your two nostrils – was blocking a breathing channel, so that was straightened. Other internal nasal structures – turbinates that clean, filter and humidify your air — also required surgical trimming. Those procedures were duly attended to so we stepped back to let the body specialist cosmetic surgeon tend to the liposuction.

(Learn more about functional nose surgery.)

Now at this point, the attentive reader might ask: Why not have one cosmetic surgeon do both procedures?

Good question. Cosmetic plastic surgery is best done by cosmetic surgeons known as “super-specialists.” That is, they perform a narrow range of cosmetic procedures, do them daily and become highly specialized.

Such specialization means a quicker procedure via economic hand movements that have been done thousands of time. A super-specialist cosmetic surgeon also disturbs less tissue going in and coming out so fewer after-surgery black and blue marks are seen.

In our case, we only perform cosmetic surgeries of the face, neck and head.

The liposuction was done by Stuart Linder, M.D., FACS, a super-specialist in cosmetic procedures of the body like:

• Breast augmentation
• Breast reduction
• Tummy tuck
• Gynecomastia (male breast reduction)
• Liposuction

Increasingly, more of surgery is given over to super-specialists. For instance, Ophthalmologists once did all eye surgeries. Now, we have Ophthalmologist surgeons who specialize in one area, like corneal replacement, retina surgery or cataract surgery.

Takeaway message: Avoid cosmetic surgery by jacks-of-all plastic surgery procedures, but master of none.