My name is Dr. Julian De Silva.
I am a consultant in facial cosmetics
and Oculo-Facial Plastic surgery in London.
My area of expertise is focused purely on the face.
And the 3 commonest procedures that I perform are;
eyelid surgery also know blepharoplasty,
nose reshaping or rhinoplasty,
And face and neck lift techniques
in addition to others such as stem cell fat grafting.
My expertise extends from over 10 years working in Central London hospitals,
before specializing in purely facial cosmetic surgery.
My experience includes spending time in the cosmetic centres
of Beverly Hills Los Angeles, Manhattan, New York.
And many of the skills that I use for my patients
are customised innovations
and surgical techniques from my time in the US.
My focus is very much on giving patients natural looking results,
that means hiding scars using scarless techniques
and wherever possible generating techniques
that result in a rapid recovery as far as possible.
I have won awards and prices in innovation, in research,
in cosmetic surgery excellence,
and I am a keen advocate of teaching and I teach internationally
in facial cosmetic and plastic surgery,
and I have authorised peer review journal
got journal articles and published book chapters.
I am keen advocate for teaching the next generation of surgeons.
I would say that 10% to 20% of the surgery that I do
is complex revision surgery on patients who have had surgery elsewhere.
And this requires the use of complex techniques,
equipment and graft tissues in order to give
these patients the best possible results.
I am very passionate about what I do.
I'm an artist. I am a sculpture.
And I use those skills everyday and I get a great deal of satisfaction
from the patients that I treat.
In here at the Gherkin is Dr. Julian De Silva
a Cosmetic Surgeon with 2 practices in London.
It's great to have you with us tonight Dr. De Silva.
- Thank you. - First of all give us an idea
about the size of your business and the kind of procedures which are very popular.
So I specialize very much in the face.
So the 3 principle areas that I help patients
with are eyelids and blepharoplasty,
nose reshaping rhinoplasty and the face and neck lifting, those techniques.
I can tell you just specializing in that one area in the body
it requires a great deal of skill and technique
in order to keep up to date with all the advances.
There's continual evolution in medicine.
Where we were 5, 10 years ago is not where we are today.
As your graphics illustrated the cosmetic industry
has changed dramatically in the last 10 years.
Non-surgical treatments, Botox and fillers, were not nearly as accessible,
and many didn't even exist 10 years ago.
This is a continual evolution.
With every patient I treat I spend more than 2 hours
with every patient before I contemplate doing surgery on them.
That's so I really know exactly what they want,
what that patient's expectations are,
and also give them an idea of what those risks are.
If I was to give you one example, eyelid surgery,
or also known as blepharoplasty
is the most common cosmetic surgery in the world.
- Yes. - It's regarded as a
relatively safe procedure. However, there is a tiny chance,
a less than 1% chance of blindness after blepharoplasty.
I tell every individual patient that there is a tiny risk of this happening.
Of course there are steps you can take to reduce this, to minimize it.
However, at the end of the day surgery is surgery,
and occasionally unexpected things occur.
I think that's when we're talking about regulation,
we're talking about training staff whether they're doctors,
whether they're nurses or other individuals,
so that they are aware of the potential risk of doing some of these procedures.
The chance of having complications
from a Botox or a filler is relatively very small.
However, if you don't understand or appreciate the anatomy of the face,
or the potential risks then there's definitely a call
for further regulation to help with that.