Plastic surgeon transforms private practice to offer relief to overtaxed ERs
Yahoo Life spoke with New York based plastic surgeon, Dr. Kevin Tehrani, MD, who is placing cosmetic surgeries on hold, making his ambulatory surgical centers available to overtaxed ERs.
Video Transcript
KEVIN TEHRANI: I took an oath to take care of patients. And I felt the need to be involved in this crisis and be able to do my part to help patients in need.
My name is Dr. Kevin Tehrani. I'm a board certified plastic surgeon for Aristocrat Plastic Surgery, which is the name of my practice, with offices both here in New York City, as well as my Long Island office in Great Neck.
Pre-COVID, my overall presence in the aesthetic marketplace was facial and body contouring. So I do a lot of facelifts, bodylifts, breast augmentation, tummy tucks, liposuction. Since the COVID shutdown, we've transformed both offices, primarily our New York City office, to an emergency care center.
That's emergency surgical care center for patients that may have lacerations or cuts, may have wounds or infections, bleeding issues, skin graft issues, more reconstructive elements that are not aesthetic in nature. And we have tried to offload the need for those non-COVID patients to go to the emergency room to try to take care of their issues in the office.
Allison is a lovely patient who was at home with her daughter. And unbeknownst, all of a sudden, she's got a little bit of a cut above her eyelid.
ALISON MEREL: Me, my husband, and my two kids-- my daughter Evelyn, who's 3, and my son Harry, who's 9 months-- were in isolation in our apartment just trying to stay in as much as possible. And then, of course, my daughter, who's the most careful child there is, just tripped over her own feet. And she fell into a trunk by my bed. And there was just lots of bleeding.
KEVIN TEHRANI: She contacted through my service. And we were able to do a telehealth session where I was able to take a look at it and quickly come to the conclusion that she needed stitches.
ALISON MEREL: We couldn't go to the emergency room. It was-- it was the height of the-- it was the height of the coronavirus when this happened, when the emergency rooms were just overflooded with patients.
And it was just so nice to be able to have this option.
KEVIN TEHRANI: We organized for them to meet in our basically recovery room, which is now a makeshift procedure room. We met there with full-on protective equipment and were able to take care of her laceration.
ALISON MEREL: So frightened. So frightened. My daughter did scream. Once he numbed the area, she was totally fine. She was happy at the end.
KEVIN TEHRANI: Patients coming in are going to be-- first of all, they're coming with a mask. They'll be greeted with my nurse or my surgical tech, who have protective equipment, as well as temperature checks with our floor camera that will be able to check them before they even walk into the office. And they actually go through a pre-COVID questionnaire to make sure that they haven't had contacts that makes some high-risk for them to come to a negative COVID environment.
In addition to that, as of last week, we started doing testing-- COVID testing-- both antibody and swab testing for patients that are upcoming for their surgery operations in the upcoming few weeks, as well as patients who just want to know if they've had exposure or have antibodies against COVID that are asymptomatic during this time.
First and foremost, I'm a physician. Even though I'm an aesthetic plastic surgeon, I think we all are in this to help our colleagues in the emergency room. As we're downtrending and we're seeing less and less of that, obviously, we will be able to get back to some normalcy, whatever that may be.
