Dr. Hasan Ali – Top Plastic Surgeon for the Month of February / March 2016
Congratulations to you Dr. Hasan Ali on being the Top Plastic Surgeon for the month of February and March 2016! How excited are you on winning this title?
It’s a great honor for me perhaps. This is very encouraging to know that how my colleagues think of me. For any doctor who received any award it’s an immense pleasure. It’s a positive and encouraging feeling for any doctor in any specialty and I’m really honored and I’m really happy on this.
You have received great reviews from your peers in the industry. So what was your first thought on Doctor’s Choice Awards?
Doctors’ Choice Awards is a great platform for the doctors. Peer review is always a most reliable form of reference, and it is really strong and influential and always beneficial for the doctors. I congratulate the team of Doctors’ Choice Awards for giving doctors such an opportunity to share their thoughts. And this is not only helpful for a doctor’s image but also very useful for patients in selecting a particular doctor in a particular specialty. Nowadays when there are lot of doctors in any specialty and people are always going online and they are reading the reviews of the doctors, this kind of award and this kind of platform is really helpful for selecting a doctor by patients. And also for the colleagues of other specialties, when they decide to refer to a particular doctor. They can always find out the doctors who are top doctors, who has good reviews, and they can always recommend these doctors for their patients.
What inspired you to be a plastic surgeon?
The reason of selecting the Plastic Surgery specialty was during my medical school when I was doing the clinical rotation. I found out these reconstructive procedures and especially visiting the Plastic Surgery department and seeing these burn reconstruction and other road traffic accident cases that worked out by the Plastic Surgeons that time. Also the newly emerged aesthetic field which wasn’t that popular at that time in my own country. So I wanted to opt to a specialty which was rare and with more challenge, where there is an integration of other specialties, like General Surgery, Urology, and Orthopedic Surgery when all other specialties having an aesthetic portion which combines and forms this plastic reconstruction in aesthetic surgery and that was my main reason of inspiration. The other was obviously my dad always encouraged me and he asked me to look into this specialty and that was one of the very big reason that I picked this specialty.
What conditions are commonly treated by you, and what do you believe sets you apart from others?
The common conditions I treat mainly in my main practice comprises of body contouring surgery. I have been doing body contouring procedures for the past nine years. When I started, after finishing my residency, I was mostly dealing with a lot of reconstruction at the beginning of my initial post as an assistant presenting in one of the universities back home. Then, later my private practice was dealing with the body contouring, especially the liposuction. So I purchased the system VASER which is now considered as one of the gold standards in the liposuction. Though there are many other systems also there in the market, I started using VASER and this was very useful for me. And I have been doing VASER for the past nine to ten years and that is the practice at the moment mainly comprises of procedures like liposuction, abdominoplasty, face lift, and also other procedures which are minimally invasive procedures that I also perform. Fat grafting is one which I have been doing very extensively. Every week I have patients for fat grafting and I also perform fat grafting to the breast which is also getting very popular as lot of patients did not like to go for an implant augmentation for breast. That is also one of the top procedures in my practice.
I understand you have performed over 4,000 cosmetic surgery procedures. So what do you believe defines the term “aesthetic?”
As the doctors say, “beauty lies in the eyes of beholder.” It is not me who has to decide what patients want. Always I want my patients to decide what they want. “Aesthetic”’ is a very broad term and beauty can be variable among the different nationalities, different races, different color, and this is like I deal with patients in different ways. My main practice comprises in Dubai, and we have over 200 nationalities living here and I have been operating on different types of people with different aesthetic concepts. It is really challenging and at the same time it is really interesting that you see people of different origins and different types. As I deal with the body contouring in certain part of the body, where one type of place they like and another person might not like that much. So you have to deal with what patients want. First I listen to the patient and I learn what they want and I tell them what can be done. It is always the patient’s choice and sometimes as a doctor you can always say “no” to the patient but they always seek the advice of the doctor. So patient selection or the specialty is very important and aesthetic or beauty depends on various factors. It’s a doctor’s aesthetic responsibility to choose correct patient and perform the right procedure.
You had developed fame with VASER Liposuction procedures for body contouring, and have performed several complex procedures for both women and men. Can you elaborate more about this procedure and its benefits?
VASER liposuction is basically third generation ultrasound and it helps in disrupting the fat cells. Then these fat cells can be removed from the body with the help of the certain specified cannulas which are gentle and they do not disturb and damage certain important structures like vessels, nerves, and connective tissue. The other important thing with this type of procedure is to give the skin a contraction and that’s why you see lot of skin contraction after the liposuction which apparently is not that obvious with the traditional methods. Patient can also go on the same day because it less invasive and leaves less bruising to the patients. The recovery back to the work and results wise it is much faster, so patient can go back to the normal routine activities right after a day or two and then they can resume all other activities within a week’s time. There are other benefits of using VASER, other than liposuction. You can also combine it with cutting procedures like abdominoplasty, brachioplasty, and even body lift procedures. And the very important thing I should mention here is the fat grafting. Old methods of ultrasonic liposuction usually kill fat cells and this is an advance. It has a minimal amount of ultrasonic energy. It does not kill the fat cells; just disrupts the fat cells and it doesn’t emulsify. So the fat cells are still alive. There are certain studies which are published and in the literature you can see that the fat cells are viable and can be used in fat grafting to augment areas like buttocks and breasts and in the augmentation of the certain areas of the face.
Do you believe collaboration and networking among doctors through services and programs such as Doctors’ Choice Awards play a significant role in the success of a modern medical professional?
Yes, the patients who are seen by one type of doctor one specialty of doctor can be correctly referred to go to another good quality doctor. And this platform of Doctors’ Choice Awards is an excellent source for patients and doctors both. These patients can be transferred or referred correctly with the doctors awarding for a certain specific problem. For example, if a doctor is good in nose surgery and if he develops fame with those type of surgeries, these doctors who are already on this platform can refer the other colleagues to certain doctors here. So it is very helpful and I would say the quality of work can be increased with such type of organization. I congratulate the DCA for developing such a platform.
Lastly, what are your future plans?
My future plan is basically to establish a good quality patient care and a good quality patient service in plastic surgery, where the patient can have access to our day care surgery and minimal invasive surgery. I’m in the process of establishing such a unit which will provide safe, effective and targeted population of patients which are looking into the super plastic surgery services which I provide at the moment. So the patients can come from anywhere, any part of the country our outside of the country, and get the best service from me and my team.
My message basically is that we treat patients with delicacy, efficiency, and with respect. Thank you.