Podcast Update 2024

Welcome to Park Avenue Plastic Surgery Class, the podcast where we explore controversies and breaking issues in plastic surgery. I'm your co-host, Summer Hardy, a clinical assistant at Bass Plastic Surgery in New York City. I'm excited to be here with Dr. Lawrence Bass, Park Avenue plastic surgeon, educator, and technology innovator.

The title of today's episode is Podcast Update 2024. The podcast has completed three full years of content. As we embark on a fourth year, it's good time to look back at what the podcast has done and look forward to what we're planning. Before we get to that look and discussion, I have another announcement. The podcast has a new co-host. I'm delighted to introduce Summer Hardy. Summer is a clinical assistant at Bass Plastic Surgery and will take over the job of co-hosting the podcast and helping to elucidate the topics in a manner that's understandable for laypeople. Summer, welcome.

Thank you, Dr. Bass. I'm excited to be here and look forward to helping our listeners learn about the fascinating world of plastic surgery. So without further delay, let's get into today's topic. Going back to the beginning, what led you to start the podcast?

The podcast got started in 2021, and this was past the point when we had suspension of elective care that took place during the COVID pandemic, but we still had a lot of active COVID and things certainly were not in any way normal. Most medical meetings at that time were still remote, and a few had started up hybrid with most people attending remotely and hospital conferences also had flipped to remote, so I was doing a lot less lecturing to colleagues, a lot less training with the residents who were learning plastic surgery. At the podcast provided a means for me to share my perspective on all things in aesthetic plastic surgery. Research and technology innovation, and what is now called translational research, taking basic science bench laboratory discoveries, taking engineering and bringing that into the clinical arena that helps inform how to incorporate cutting edge advances in plastic surgery, clinical care, and in plastic surgery decision making, and I was looking for a way to share my experiences, my expertise, and opinions on new technologies in aesthetic plastic surgery. Ken Greenberg, the president of HG Media, suggested the idea of a podcast to provide a broader audience for these kinds of educational activities. HG Media is the company that produces these podcasts for us, and Ken Greenberg is a man I've worked with for many years producing videos for my medical lectures as well as various marketing activities.

Okay, that makes sense to me. Now let's talk about the name Park Avenue Plastic Surgery Class Podcast.

Well, of course, I practice in New York City on Park Avenue, and that's one of the hotbeds of plastic surgery activity worldwide. I don't think we're necessarily any better than plastic surgeons in other parts of the world, but it is cutting edge or state of the art and it's a highly successful, highly refined rendition of plastic surgery. So I think it's very instructive for people to understand with that Park Avenue perspective, how to decide about their clinical care, how we fit things together to help our patients look their best. The idea of the class is that these episodes are really little classes or studies to help inform people, and that narrows the gap in knowledge between the plastic surgeon and the patient. You can't ever get to the surgeon's level of knowledge or experience having trained and then practiced for decades, but the less of a mismatch in background knowledge, the better it is when it comes time for people to decide what treatment they want or how to proceed with plastic surgery.

And what's the approach the podcast takes?

The podcast tries to present cutting edge plastic surgery and aesthetic medicine, review history, briefly debunk myths, and make things understandable to laypeople. Most important, we're trying to help people take a realist approach to understanding and consuming plastic surgery. There's a ton of noise out there about plastic surgery in the media, in social media, on the internet, and we're trying to quiet down all that noise and get to the kernel of what's real in deciding about plastic surgery. The podcast is not commercial. No one can pay to be on the podcast or to have a certain view expressed on the podcast. What we discuss represents my professional opinion or that of the various guests that come on, and we intentionally try to showcase differences of opinion among the experts in a respectful but open-minded fashion so listeners can see the pluses and minuses. Rather than that, there's some absolutely right answer or single best way.

Okay. Thanks for explaining. What are some of your favorite episodes over the past three years?

Well, we've had a lot of content in three years, but some of the facelift episodes are definitely my favorites. Deep Dive on the Deep Plane Facelift with Dr. Jason Bloom and the episode on different facelift techniques with Dr. Sherrell Aston, but we have many, many facelift episodes. Don't Fear the F Word, Before and After the Facelift, so those were all favorites. I also really like the Power of One where we discuss making a unified approach to all of your surgical and nonsurgical aesthetic needs. Over Filler or Just Overfilled? was another great episode, and that's just one of several filler episodes that we've had, which is another important topic. Finally, some of the very technical scientific episodes are fascinating. The episodes on exosomes and regenerative medicine really presented a lot of cutting edge science, and of course the inaugural episodes have to be among my favorites.

(07:45)
Those are the Barbie Meets Star Wars episodes, and it's ironic that we talk about the Star Wars program, which came out of National Defense Labs and Barbie and that those were the inaugural episodes years before Barbie and Oppenheimer warped in what ultimately became one of the National Defense Labs. So we had those episodes years before those movies came out, and my favorite series is probably Decades of Face, and we've had so much expertise from so many really outstanding guests. It's hard to pick, and I don't want to single anyone out, but we've really had an outstanding group of guests who have had a huge amount to contribute.

Can you share any information about what subjects are popular with listeners?

So I have my favorites, which I've just described, but you're right, Summer, that listeners have their favorites and the facelift and skincare episodes tend to be the top downloaded episodes. The number one episode in terms of downloads was Daxxify with Dr. Kane, but other very popular episodes were the facelift episode with Dr. Aston and the Deep Dive on Deep Plane Facelift with Dr. Bloom. So what the listeners like and what I like match to a certain extent, but you've been a listener to the podcast before this summer, so maybe you can tell me what some of your favorite episodes are.

I also have similar favorite episodes to you and other listeners. I like the Deep Dive on Deep Plane facelift with Dr. Bloom. The Skin Is In: The Growing Focus on Skin Quality, and I really like the Decades of Face series. So what's in store going forward?

The podcast will continue to bring you up to the minute information about the latest aesthetic plastic surgery, as well as my analysis of where these things fit in, because that's the real challenge. There are so many technologies out, there are so many options and which ones really work, which ones address what kind of problems, that's where the challenge comes in, not just for patients, but for aesthetic surgeons to figure out how to put things together. We'll start some fascinating new series and we'll continue to feature authoritative guests.

We'll also revisit and update some topics as things change or to see how new devices work out.

Finally, we're planning to explore some of the creative capabilities of plastic surgeons and what led them to enter the field. I mean, plastic surgeons, many of them are very interesting people with many, many different outstanding skills beyond just their surgical or medical capabilities, and so we'll explore that a little bit with some guests coming up. We'll also talk to some medical industry inventors to learn how they came to innovate, something that was a game changer in aesthetic medicine and what they think about the future of the industry.

I can't wait. Any final points for our listeners, Dr. Bass?

All the episodes going back three years are out there on all the podcast platforms. That means you can stream or download any of the episodes at any time, so if you have a question or interest in a particular area of plastic surgery, this is your reference library to get a detailed discussion on that particular topic, a class if you will, on that subject. This is good advanced study prior to a consultation with your plastic surgeon, or just to get more information and understanding before making any final decisions.

Thank you, Dr. Bass for sharing this recap about the podcast and for inviting me to join the podcast team. Thank you for listening to the Park Avenue Plastic Surgery Class Podcast. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, write a review, and share the show with your friends. Be sure to join us next time to avoid missing all the great content that is coming your way. If you want to contact us with comments or questions, we'd love to hear from you, send us an email at podcast@drbass.net or DM us on Instagram @drbassnyc.