“I care a lot about aesthetic surgery, I care about teaching it to others, and I care about the process of making it better.” – Richard J. Warren, MD
I got into medicine circuitously. I came from a small town where the doctors in town were important people and did good things. I respected my doctor. Then I went off to the university in the big city and liked scientific things, got into mathematics, got into biology, and thought I should try to create a job out of this. Thinking that I could help people and actually do things with a science background led me to medicine. By rotating through different types of surgical fields as a senior medical student, I stumbled on plastic surgery. It was very diverse, very interesting, and I liked the people in it and thought, “This is for me.”
Aesthetic plastic surgery has seen huge advances in the last 20 years. Things that the public knows about — such as liposuction and Botox injection — didn’t exist 20 years ago. There have been a lot of scientific changes. There’s significant research going on to find the best way to do things, and the public has really accepted aesthetic surgery as a way to improve quality of life.
Aesthetic Surgery reflects these changes. It’s a modern textbook: It’s gone from black and white drawings to color diagrams with video attached to almost everything. In the old editions, aesthetic topics were scattered throughout the volumes. Here, we’ve collected all the fields of aesthetics in one place. We’re covering some unique things, such as non-surgical techniques from resurfacing to fillers and that type of thing. We’ve expanded the section on facial aging, with a very good assessment of how the face ages. There’s a bit of a culture of personality in plastic surgery and in the face lift section, we’ve got world experts saying exactly how they would do it, and that follows after a text that covers just the basic principles rather than repeating this over and over. We move on to another field that’s grown a lot in the last decade, body contouring with lower body lifts post-bariatric surgery and that type of thing. Buttock augmentation is a new topic, as is Asian facial surgery, a growing field worldwide. The author selection has been wonderful: It’s an international all-star team.
Why do we do the things that we do in our spare time? I suppose it’s out of interest really. I care a lot about aesthetic surgery, I care about teaching it to others, and I care about the process of making it better. So by means of this textbook, I consider this textbook really to be the premier educational text in plastic surgery. It’s an honor to be part of it. Certainly it’s been a labor of love. It didn’t happen overnight, but it’s been a really great thing to be part of.
Bio
Richard J. Warren, MD is a Clinical Professor of Plastic Surgery at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. He served for 11 years as Professor and Chairman of Plastic Surgery at UBC as well as chief of Plastic Surgery at the Vancouver General Hospital and the UBC Hospital. He is currently Chairman of Plastic Surgery with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (Chair of the Canadian Board of Plastic Surgery). A graduate of the UBC Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Warren completed a surgical internship in the San Francisco area, a Plastic Surgery Residency in Vancouver, a reconstructive fellowship in Norfolk Virginia and a travelling cosmetic surgery fellowship. He has been in private practice in Vancouver since 1983, where he is the founder and continues as Medical Director of the Vancouver Plastic Surgery Center.
Dr. Warren is past president of the Canadian Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and the Northwest Society of Plastic Surgeons. He is on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. He is the past Chairman of the Plastic Surgery Examination board with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and is a senior examiner with the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Dr. Warren has been a guest lecturer and surgical demonstrator at universities and medical centers around the world and has been a Travelling Professor for the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Dr. Warren is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, primarily in the field of facial aesthetic surgery. He is the Continuing Medical Education Editor for the Aesthetic Surgery Journal. His research interest is in the study of successful training methods for residents in Plastic Surgery. Dr. Warren is editor of the Aesthetic Surgery volume in Plastic Surgery, 3rd Edition.
Related Authors: Peter C. Neligan, MB,FRCS(I), FRCSC, FACS; Geoffrey Gurtner, MD FACS; Eduardo D. Rodriguez, MD, DDS; Joseph E. Losee MD, FACS, FAAP
