Kiya Movassaghi, MD - Plastic Surgeon in Eugene, Oregon

Eva Sheie (00:03):
The purpose of this podcast is simple. We want you to get to know your doctor before meeting them in person because you're making a life-changing decision, and time is scarce. The more you can learn about who your doctor is before you meet them, the better that first meeting will be. There's no substitute for an in-person appointment, but we hope this comes close. I'm your host, Eva Sheie, and you're listening to Meet the Doctor. Today I meet the doctor. My guest is Eugene Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Kiya Movassaghi Welcome Dr. Movassaghi.

Dr. Movassaghi (00:39):
Thank you for having me.

Eva Sheie (00:41):
Tell us a little bit about yourself, especially from the perspective of what you want patients to know about you.

Dr. Movassaghi (00:47):
Sure. I'm a plastic surgeon in practice, uh, for the past 21 years now. I've gone through many, many years of training, including 14 years after college focusing on medical education. I've got all my training done at uh, Harvard Medical School, so it was Harvard Medical School, then I did Harvard Dental School, then I did general surgery, and then I did plastic uh, surgery at Harvard Combined program with a focus on craniofacial. And then when I finished my training, I moved to Eugene where I've been practicing since 2002. My focus has always been quality and uh, providing the best possible outcome that I can provide to my patients. Treating patients like I would treat my own family and I would, uh, do the best to achieve the best outcome. And I'm always striving for doing things differently in a better fashion. I'm very critical of my own result.

(01:44)
So if there's something that I'm not happy with, I'll always strive for improving it. As a matter of fact, things I do now, I wasn't doing even five years ago, three years ago, I keep evolving and because of that passion I have become a national and international teacher. So I do a lot of teaching. I've published a textbook on breast surgery, shaping the breasts. So I go around the country and the world talk about these topics. I have pioneered different techniques of facelift and different concepts in facial rejuvenation. Again, that's something that we are working on writing. So I do a lot of publications because education and, you know, striving for better outcome is my passion. I used to be part of a residency program at O H S U and I would have re residents spend time with me to educate them on cosmetic surgery.

(02:30)
But about eight years ago, I established my own aesthetic fellowship. These are for surgeons who finished their residency and they want to have a focused year of training by somebody who's an expert in the area and they spend a year. So they go through a very arduous process of, uh, interviews and matching and everything like that. And then they match and they spend a year with me. So that, that's something that I have, I'm proud of and it's probably one of my best accomplishment for the past eight years to educate the future of the aesthetic surgeons.

Eva Sheie (03:02):
You mentioned in your training that you had done dental. And craniofacial.

Dr. Movassaghi (03:07):
The, the craniofacial was part of my, I kind of had, we had some elective time, six months, so I kind of spent six months at Mass General with, uh, Dr. Mike Yaremchuk, he's a very famous, uh, plastic and craniofacial surgeon and I had a specific interest on that area. So he would spend a lot of time with him and I learned a lot from him on craniofacial surgery. And as a matter of fact, because of my background, my training and dental degree as well I think has made me a much more proficient and expert in the area of the face.

Eva Sheie (03:39):
That was where I was going with that was um, did the dental and the craniofacial that extra education give you any advantages or change the way that you think about the face?

Dr. Movassaghi (03:50):
Absolutely, and when I look at the face, the face is not just a soft tissue. There are layers of tissue that forms the face. It starts with the skin surface and fatty layer and the muscles underneath it. Then you have the bone, and the bone is then you have the dentition and the, the body, what we call occlusion. Those are all the structures. So the infrastructure is what forms the face. As a matter of fact, when I analyze the face, there are times where I say, you know, your bite is this and I, you should go get your bite fixed with by an orthodontist before I would do a face work for you. The result would be better. Or sometimes patients come in with, you know, a deficient bony structure, whether it is congenital they're born with it or whether it's developmental or aging process where they actually lost some volume. So we have to reestablish that. Sometimes I put implants to re augment the cheeks, the chin, but those are things that I can bring to the table because I understand the whole face inside out.

Eva Sheie (04:48):
How does someone's face change on the inside, especially that bone over the course of your life? I think a lot of us think your skull is just your skull, but it changes doesn't it?

Dr. Movassaghi (04:58):
It changes, absolutely. You know, the aging is multidimensional is skin changes. So you have the aging process of the skin, soft tissue, the fat. A lot of times patients faces shrinks and you actually lose volume. So you may gain volume in certain areas, but you lose volumes in certain areas. For instance, if you look at some of the athletes, they have sort of this very depressed midface. They lost that midface fat. So you lose that. And then also as we've seen by looking at uh, CT scans of the face with time, there is resorption of the bone. So you lose, again, some of the depression that you see in the midface of the patient is from resorption of the bone. So when you go into about rejuvenation, it's more than just pulling the skin up. You gotta do all the layers. A good outcome is when you look at somebody's face and say, you look better. Are you sleeping better? They don't know why you look better. There's nobody should tell you, did you have a facelift? That's bad outcome. If somebody knows you had a facelift, that's a bad facelift. If somebody tells you you look good, but they can't figure out why you look good or you tell somebody my age is this and say, oh really you look a lot younger, that's a compliment. That's what I want my patients to hear.

Eva Sheie (06:12):
At about what age does the bone in your face start to disappear?

Dr. Movassaghi (06:17):
You know, obviously part is individual issue. You know, every, we all age differently based on our genetics, based on our uh, diet, based on our environmental exposure, your ethnicity. So a lot, it's a multifactorial, but you know, as you start noticing that, uh, resorption process, you know, your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties goes on.

Eva Sheie (06:39):
I think the, the way this came up last time I remember discussing this was I was joking about that. I think it's a myth that, but they say your nose keeps growing as you get older. And I think the surgeon said that's actually not what's happening. I think that your face is getting smaller, your bone is getting smaller.

Dr. Movassaghi (06:58):
I think there are some changes with soft tissue of the nose. It gets a little bit elongated and a lot more lax. And you know, you could see like if you have a, a tendency with the nose has a tendency with uh, like let's say, uh, some hump and the tip dropping that probably can get exaggerated.

Eva Sheie (07:15):
Have you started to talk with your patients about planning how they're going to treat their faces or their bodies over the long term in a way that's more than just the, the issue that they're coming to you for it on the day that they see you?

Dr. Movassaghi (07:33):
It's a very good question. As a matter of fact, that's where the medicine in general is going, but is specifically, uh, aesthetic surgery and aesthetic medicine. That's the future. It's about not just regeneration and rejuvenation but also prejuvenation. You know, because we all have lifespan, right? So how can you expand that first part? You uh, you're kind of a younger youthful version of you. How can we expand, elongate that period of time? So you spend more in this side of the spectrum than the other side where you're older and you now you're coming to rejuvenate. So a lot of the technologies and that are coming out is how can we elongate that portion of your life, your appearance? So patients are coming in a much, much younger age for skincare. We have a lot of technologies that can help you to maintain the collagen level in your skin and also tightening of your skin. We have technologies that now skin products that we can introduce into the skin and we have ways to have as a conduit that can allow for these products to better penetrate your skin. So a lot, lot of stuff that we can do to rejuvenate your skin. So by the time you get to your forties people say, oh gosh, you look like your twenties. That would be the idea.

Eva Sheie (08:56):
Yeah, <laugh>. Yeah, that would be nice. Is there any technology you're particularly excited about?

Dr. Movassaghi (09:02):
Again, starts with this surface of the skin. So if you take care of your skin, it's just like, you know the analogy I use and I'm a dentist also. So analogy is if you floss and you brush your teeth every day and you see your dentist every six months for cleaning, when you're 90 years old, the chances are you are still going to have your own teeth in the old days. So that's your prejuvenation, right? You're keeping your teeth that you have in the old days, you know, by the time you were people were forties and fifties, they all had dangerous cuz they didn't take care of their teeth. The same analogy, if you take care of your skin at a younger age, you're not gonna change your genetic, but you can change your behavior, you can change your environmental exposure and how you care for your skin.

(09:44)
If you take care of your skin at a young age, for instance, with a good skin product at home on a daily basis, there are a lot of good products out there. Minimize your direct sun exposure, especially if you have a very fair skin like we call Fitzpatrick type one skin. Minimize that and comfort to the office for professional care. Like, you know, get hydra facial on a every a few months, get some um, microneedling or RF microneedling. As a matter of fact, I've had that myself and it's a great procedure to, you know, to rejuvenate and create some collagen, get some tightening of your skin. So do those things. Get your Botox done. Botox is not only to make you look better, but also to prevent it from getting worse. If you do Botox, start your twenties and thirties, I can guarantee you by the time you get to your fifties you will have no wrinkles where you've done the Botox. So best treatment for wrinkles is prevention.

Eva Sheie (10:38):
When I started maybe five years ago, maybe longer time goes by too fast, I had really, really strong forehead muscles and I just look so mad. But even now, even when my Botox wears off, they're not there anymore.

Dr. Movassaghi (10:54):
Yeah, exactly. And also Botox kind of interferes with the muscle memory and your, how your brain. Cuz a lot of times we have animations. When you don't go in those animations, many animations are learned behavior. So if you don't go there for a while, you kind of lose that memory.

Eva Sheie (11:11):
No one has told me how mad I look for years.

Dr. Movassaghi (11:13):
Yeah, I was the whole time. I'm still looking at you. I'm like, why you are so happy <laugh> <laugh>.

Eva Sheie (11:19):
Well thank you <laugh>. Yeah, that I, I go to uh, Restora it in Austin where Ashley Gordon and Dustin Reid.

Dr. Movassaghi (11:26):
Good friend of mine.

Eva Sheie (11:28):
Mf-hmm<affirmative> <laugh>. They're great. Take us inside the non-work you, what do you do away from the office?

Dr. Movassaghi (11:38):
You know, family is very important to me. I when obviously when my kids were at home, I'm an empty nester now. When my kids were home, you know, we were engaged with them. I did went to all their activities, they were athletics, so they were doing sports stuff and I would go to all the, sometimes I actually would get too competitive that they would have to take me away.

Eva Sheie (11:58):
Oh, you're a that guy.

Dr. Movassaghi (11:58):
Yeah, I'm that guy <laugh>. But uh, so that was very important to me. And then obviously I spent a lot of time with, my wife would be married for 32 years together for 36 years. So we do a lot of stuff together and I also big believer in athletic and taking care of yourself. You know, I don't preach this just to my patients how to take care of yourself, but I do the same thing. So to me, I've actually started a task force for the society physician wellness because we come across as major physical and emotional burnout among the surgeon, especially plastic surgeons. This is a very emotionally taxing, you know, specialty. Especially when you need aesthetic field cuz you're taking patients who are feeling well, you make them feel worse and look worse so that they feel better in the future. That journey can be very emotional for everybody, for the patient and for the doctors.

(12:54)
And you have to kind of, so you do that day in and day out. So it's like a overused injury, like muscles, well it's a overused injury or emotions and you get burned out, physicians get burned out. And then on top of that, all the office stuff that we have to do and management, business owner, business owner. So a lot of that sites can't wear us down. So I think the physician burnout is very important issue. Um, unfortunately suicide among physicians, especially surgeons very high. So it, we have to intervene. So to me, I've been a preacher on that. As a matter of fact, when I was the north president, the Northwestern society six years ago, my invited guests were one person talked about the burnout and the other person talked about the physical stuff, how to stay healthy because they're on, on top of the emotional side, the physical side.

(13:42)
This is also a very taxing, um, procedure cuz in, in, during the surgery we have our body placed in certain positions for long period of time. You know, a lot of things that we do, it requires very steady hands. So you kind of maintain that static position for long time and it's not good for your spine, it's not good for your hands, not good for your shoulders, neck. A lot of my colleagues at a young age, they're having spinal fusions and surgeries and all kinds of rotator cuff problems. So we, we have to take care of our soul. So I'm a big preacher on that, so that's a big focus of mine. I, for, on a personal level, I work with a trainer twice a week. I, I train for triathlon, so I do races. I, as a matter of fact, got did the triathlon race, uh, last weekend. So to me, I spent a lot of my free time on personal care.

Eva Sheie (14:34):
If someone's interested in coming to see you, where should they look for you online?

Dr. Movassaghi (14:39):
A lot of my patients, uh, I would say 50% of my patients come from out of my area. So I have a lot of patients come from out of town, out of state. Part of it is word of mouth and reputation. I do a lot of talks, so get to know me, you know, my colleagues sometimes send their complicated cases for me to me to fix. Also, a lot of patients come these days from social media, they come to me and I say, where'd you come from? Uh, Google search or some kind of social media. So you have to be visible, uh, in the social media, you know, again, depends on the, your patient type. You know, your facial face to my face to patients don't come from social media, but the younger, the tummy, uh, tuck patients, the mommy makeover patients, the breast patients, they tend to come from, uh, social media. So yes, social media is strong. We have a good following in the Instagram. We are present in Facebook, all, uh, different kind of, uh, mode. And then we are, uh, on Google search, we're number one always.

Eva Sheie (15:32):
If you can spell it, you can find it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

Dr. Movassaghi (15:35):
Or if you, if you're typing in, you know, plastic Surgery, Oregon or plastic surgery, Eugene area, whatever you, I'll pop up.

Eva Sheie (15:43):
And what's your Instagram handle?

Dr. Movassaghi (15:45):
Dr. Movassaghi.

Eva Sheie (15:47):
Okay. Wonderful. Well, thank you for spending some time with us today and sharing your stories with us.

Dr. Movassaghi (15:53):
Thank you for having me.

Eva Sheie (15:58):
If you are considering making an appointment or are on your way to meet this doctor, be sure to let them know you heard them on the Meet the Doctor podcast. Check the show notes for links including the doctor's website and Instagram to learn more. Are you a doctor or do you know a doctor who'd like to be on the Meet the Doctor podcast? Book your free recording session at Meet the Doctor podcast.com. Meet the Doctor is Made with Love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis, t h e a x i s.io.