Shabnam Ghazizadeh, MD - Facial Plastic Surgeon in Newport Beach, California

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 is 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. Welcome. We're back on Meet the Doctor, and my guest today is really special. Her name is Shabnam Ghazizadeh. She's a facial plastic surgeon in the Newport Beach, California area. Welcome to the podcast. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (00:47):
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I've never done a podcast before. So This's my first one. 

Eva Sheie (00:52):
That is the point of this podcast is to show everybody how easy it is to be on a podcast. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (00:57):
Yeah, yeah. It's just a natural conversation between two people, which is great. 

Eva Sheie (01:02):
I saw that you posted a story about being on the podcast earlier today. Thank you for doing that. And I also noticed that you're having a pretty good time with your Instagram. Do you want to maybe start there and tell us how you think about Instagram and what you're trying to do? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (01:19):
So I actually started my residency programs Instagram, and I just feel like we're really lucky in this time. I mean lucky and unlucky, but social media when used well, it's just a way to really connect with people you wouldn't otherwise. And I think for aesthetics and skincare, and even now plastics even more, it's just you're seeing behind the scenes a little bit, whereas some of these things were like Hollywood's best kept secret, but now we all know about them. We know about P R P and microneedling and all these lasers and the face lifts people are getting. I posted one where some people are like, okay, I wish this had a disclaimer on it because it's seeing what you see in the operating room. But that's so awesome that you couldn't do that before. Maybe when we were much younger, it was like, take your daughter to workday. You could see the inside of the hospital and that was it. But now you can see everything that everyone does and that's really cool in the aesthetic space. 

Eva Sheie (02:17):
Sometimes, I don't know, maybe you agree with me on this or not. Do you think we take it too far and show a little too much? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (02:24):
Yeah, I think there's definitely a fine line and I'm thinking about that in the back of my head every time I make an Instagram post where I want to share, but I also want to keep the dignity of my patients and just privacy. And I'm always grateful for my patients who do let me post, but I also want to make sure that people are being kind to them because they're being vulnerable out there at the space about something that they decided to go do something extreme extremist surgery for. So it's definitely a delicate balance and I think I try to use my Instagram to educate foremost, but also kind of normalize that it's okay if you're self-conscious. It's okay if you don't want to have surgery and it's okay if you do want to have surgery, this is what it looks like and you should be really aware of exactly what the recovery is, what the actual invasiveness of these procedures are, and then if you decide to do them, then great, and hopefully you got to know your doctor more from social media, understanding them a little bit better, their philosophy, their patient care strategies, all those things. 

(03:22)
And you get a little bit of insight before you dive into something like doing surgery with someone. 

Eva Sheie (03:28):
It's very well said.

Dr. Ghazizadeh (03:30):
Thank you. 

Eva Sheie (03:31):
Do you find that they're pretty willing to let you share their face photos on Instagram? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (03:37):
Yeah, so sometimes I'm surprised the ones that I don't expect to let me share me share and the ones that I did expect to let me share don't let me share. So it really depends and it's such a personal decision. If I had to think about it, would I let someone share? Especially your face. It's not unreasonable to not. So I think most of the people who do, it's because that's how they found me and they want to give back. If they found me on Instagram and they found that information and their posts useful, then they're like, I see the utility, I'll want to give back to the community in that way. Then some people who are young and in their own, I had someone who's a tattoo artist and she only finds her patients or her clients through Instagram and she didn't want me to share even understanding how important it is. So it's variable and you just have to respect that because I think your face is sensitive and it's a personal journey that everyone's going through. So I'm always grateful when they do, but I totally understand when they don't. 

Eva Sheie (04:35):
Now you said that you started the Instagram for your residency, so why don't you kind of tell us where that was? Did you have to have a bunch of committee meetings to get that done or did they just let you go nuts and where was this? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (04:50):
Yeah, so I went to residency at U C L A, head and neck surgery, otolaryngology, head and Neck Surgery. I mean, U C L A is obviously one of the top programs in the country. We had a really supportive department. I was academic chair resident there, so chief resident, and so I was in a lot of the leadership there I would say. And I think one of the things that we always try to do is recruit the best residents that we can. I mean, obviously we have UCLA's name top training program with the top surgeons in the country. So it's not that hard, but I feel like sometimes they think you're stiff or they don't know you, and when you come in for a sub-I, or you come in for an interview for a residency, which is a five year job basically, and a hard job where you're working all the hours, you see people at their worst, they're the most tired, the most exhausted, the more stressed that they're going to be and trying to understand is that person going to fit with our vibe? 

(05:38)
Are they going to be a great resident? Are they going to try to really do their best for the patients and also for our team, because it's a really team atmosphere. You take call one day and if you're sloppy and you leave things undone, then the next person the next day has to pick that up for you and finish the task. So we started with recruitment, trying to sure that people knew that we were fun and that we're a good group of people and if you choose to come here, you have to work really hard. But we enjoy ourselves too. And then the Instagram itself, I think it's great that the other residents every year pick it up since I left and they're continuing to post on it, and I love to see the growth of the department. 

Eva Sheie (06:17):
What kind of things do you look for when you're recruiting? Do you make them stay up for 48 hours and then talk to 'em after that and see how they're doing? How do you suss that out of somebody in an interview? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (06:29):
Yeah, so I was on the committee from the resident standpoint to interview prospective residents as well. And I think it's really just personality, just finding someone who's genuine, who's hardworking. You look at their letters of recommendation, but really it's just your face-to-face interaction. And similar to your consultation with your surgeon, it's like you kind of get a feeling of do I trust this person? Do I want to work with them? Do we vibe and are they going to be there for me in the middle of the night when I'm taking this call and I need help or I need backup or whatever it is. Are they going to be a junior resident, a good chief resident when they come to that point? How are their leadership styles? And you can kind of get a sense for that pretty early in some kind of nonchalant conversation. So we always tried to do some things that were more casual than the interview atmosphere. 

Eva Sheie (07:20):
So you were there for five years. Why don't you kind of take us in reverse order and where were you before that and before that? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (07:28):
So I was born and raised in New York and I was there until about middle school and then I moved to Portland, Oregon. My parents were both engineers and they went from Xerox to Intel, which was based in Portland, not based in Portland, but one of the hubs there in Portland. So that's where I finished high school. While I was in high school, I actually did some basic science research at O H S U, which is Oregon Health Science University. It's the only medical school in Oregon. And then I went to UC Irvine where I started biomedical engineering. And then I got lucky enough to go to my dream school, which was back to Oregon for that medical school where I got my first exposure to medicine. And so I went to medical school there and then I ended up at U C L A, so kind of all around, but now we're where we want to be. My husband at UC Irvine in undergrad actually. So he always wanted to come back here. We talked about it then. So 15 years later we're back here, which is the dream. 

Eva Sheie (08:21):
It's not a bad place to land. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (08:23):
No, no complaints. 

Eva Sheie (08:25):
Now you're the only plastic surgeon in Newport Beach, is that right? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (08:29):
Yes, it's me on an island. All the patients come to me. No, it's a pretty saturated market I would say. I mean I'm sure it's the second Beverly Hills probably. So there's just a lot of plastic surgeons on of facial plastic surgeons here. So that's been something that's been a challenge of building in a saturated area. But I think my patients are self-selecting a little bit and I think Instagram and social media is helping with that a little bit. 

Eva Sheie (08:57):
Have you thought very much about how you will set yourself apart in that space? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (09:03):
I think there's a few things. I think one, being a female surgeon, a female facial plastic surgeon, with my expertise, it definitely sets me apart here. It's a lot of male dominated field. It's a lot of older school people who have been doing it for a long time. So I think that coming in with a fresh view, I just came out of fellowship. I know the cutting edge of everything. I got top scores on my inservices and I did my fellowship with the president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery. So doing my fellowship with the president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery helped me just be on the forefront of what's going on. And so I just finished studying for Boards, taking my boards exams. And so I think that coming in with the knowledge base that I have, the surgical skills that I've gained from U C L A and from my fellowship, and then also being a female surgeon and also having an awareness of what's going on out there from being on social media, I see what other people are posting, what are the trends, and my patients come to talk to me about trap Botox, which is in right now. 

(10:10)
You know, like I am aware of what's going on and what my patients might come and talk to me about. And so I feel like that sets me apart in terms of being able to appeal to that population, but also have the skill sets to do the facelifts of the other population of patients, which are predominantly older women. 

Eva Sheie (10:29):
Tell me about the practice that you're in now. Are you by yourself? Are you with a group? What's the environment that you're in today? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (10:36):
So I joined Dr. Raymond Lee, who's been in practice as a facial plastic surgeon for several years. He has a practice called Faceology MD. I actually interviewed a lot of people. I didn't want to start my practice as a standalone, mostly because I am very team spirit. I'm very collegial. I like to work in a team environment. I've always been a soccer player. And then in residency, same thing, I almost wanted to go into academics because I love the team. So that was something that was important to me is joining at least one other person, like-minded person, similar background, similar training so that we could work together, get the best results, help each other grow. And I had several offers, but this was the one that fit perfectly for me. Dr. Lee himself, his personality, and I'd go really hand in hand. And then also the practice that he's built has been marvelous. They're really hardworking, fun loving. I think my patients appreciate it. They like our MAs, our practice managers always working to get us to that next level. So it's been great to join a practice and then build my own practice within this practice. So I have my own S-corp doing my own patients and everything that's on my own, but I'm here in this environment where I have this great team and this great support. 

Eva Sheie (11:57):
Are you specializing in any particular part of the face or any particular procedure or is there a direction that you're going? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (12:05):
Yeah, so I mean I think I basically went into head and neck surgery because I love the variety of the surgical techniques. So as I tuned in on aesthetics, I enjoy all of them and it is hard for me to say I just like one because I feel like I want to keep some of those skill sets up like neck lifts. I really enjoy deep plain lip lifts. I've found that patients really get this dramatic effect and I love it. But I'd say the one procedure for me that really is why I went into facial plastic surgery is rhinoplasty. And I think the thing about rhinoplasty is that it's obviously one of the most complex surgeries that we do. If you ask any plastic surgeon, it's one of the harder ones. And I think it's because it's very delicate and it's 3 D. But I also think from my standpoint as a head and neck surgeon, someone who trained in the nose for sinus surgery, doing all kinds of airway breathing things, I like that I have to think about form and function, kind of synergize those things. So I'm not only trying to make a nose that looks good and perfect and fits the person's face, but it also is a functioning organ. Like the nose humidifies filters allows breathing, it prevents snoring. There's all these things that you have to think about when you think about rhinoplasty that is not just cosmetic. And I really like to use all those skills to make sure that you get that best result. 

Eva Sheie (13:27):
Is there anything that you wish your patients knew about rhinoplasty before they came to see you? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (13:34):
Yeah, so I guess a couple things. There's a lot of techniques in rhinoplasty. It started off more reductive where you take a big nose and you take out all this stuff and you try and make it smaller to get that petite nose. We have found that that's not ideal because you're really damaging the support structure of the nose. And so over time you start to get collapse, you get scar tissue, you get pinching in areas you didn't anticipate. So then it shifted to more structural rhinoplasty. And so I think a lot of people get caught up in open versus closed rhinoplasty. Was it open, was it closed? That's the end all, but you can cause just as much damage with a closed rhinoplasty as you can with an open. And so in my fellowship I worked with Dr. David Kim, who's a revision rhinoplasty expert in the nation, and we had a string of closed rhinoplasty revisions. 

(14:21)
So basically people who got a closed rhinoplasty because there's no incision, but they had really bad results and they had scar tissue and we had to rebuild the entire nose. So it can be just as damaging to do that with someone who doesn't know what they're doing. So I think that getting hung up on these phrases and things, especially when now that we have access to all this information and everyone's aware of close and open and preservation and all these buzzwords, it's just finding a surgeon who gets good results and understands the nose and understands what the noses function is and trying to preserve that function while giving you a good aesthetic result. 

Eva Sheie (14:59):
I think the idea of a revision rhinoplasty is about as scary as it gets. It was scary to begin with the first time and then to have it go wrong or to have something not quite go the way that it should have and have to do it again, can be even scarier. And so I hear what you're saying, it's super important that your surgeon is really, really fresh on what's happening. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (15:23):
Yeah, totally agree. And I think for the nose especially the second time is never as good as the first time. So you got to really do well on that first rhinoplasty, not skimp on price. Or I had a patient today who said she was looking outside the country maybe for price, I'm not sure why, but your best chance of a good result is your first rhinoplasty and the quoted revision rate in the US is around 15% for a revision rate. After a primary that goes up on a secondary, price goes up, everything goes up. So what you think you may have saved in that first one, if you need a second one, is in terms of emotional, physical, monetary, it's definitely not worth it. So you just got to make sure you get a good first rhinoplasty 

Eva Sheie (16:08):
In the dark corners of the internet, I think there's a set of people who go to Turkey for rhinoplasty. It's funny how there's these weird trends and patterns that I see, and that's one of the places where they like to go. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (16:21):
Well, the Turkish people are at the forefront. They're doing amazing things. They are teaching at a lot of our conferences. And I also follow some Turkish Instagram rhinoplasty people, and I think that they're doing phenomenal and they have a lot of volume of large noses that they have good skills with. But I think the problem with that is, especially for rhinoplasty, is the six hours in the OR is not what's important in rhinoplasty. It's that whole recovery process afterwards while you are worried you're stressed out because it doesn't look right. There's a big recovery in rhinoplasty, and that's why we say it takes at least a year to get to a what someone calls your final result. But we know that it's still changing even after that. So that aftercare, you don't get from going to another country. And I think that that's super important in all plastic surgery, but also in rhinoplasty specifically because you need that reassurance. There are some maneuvers and things we can do after the surgery in case things aren't going exactly as planned or you're forming scar tissue or you want to tape or you just need that. So I think that it's not a one and done surgery in any sense. You also can't get your op report if you want to get a revision. It's just one of those things where you want to have someone reputable and someone who's available and available 24/7 to you because they're your surgeon. 

Eva Sheie (17:43):
There's enough risk with any surgery all by itself, and then when you leave the country or you do something like that, you're just adding exponentially to it. It's never made sense to me. Well, this is the part of the podcast that I love where I get to ask you about who you are outside of the office. So tell me what you like to do when you're not at work. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (18:07):
So I am a boy mom. I have two boys. I have a almost three-year-old and I have a four month old, so they keep me busy. So my three year old is potty training right now. I keep calling him three, but he's two years and nine months. But 

Eva Sheie (18:27):
I have a three-year-old and she's potty training right now.

Dr. Ghazizadeh (18:29):
Yeah, so he's potty training and it's going pretty well. And then my four month old, he's starting to roll over and he's doing all the four month old things, so it's going to be really fun once they're both mobile and going to keep me really busy. So I love finding interactive things to do with them. I go to the library with my son. We're teaching them to trilingual, so that's been, we always got these looks and it's actually working really nicely. My two year old, he can flip between the languages really well. He knows who speaks which one because my in-laws are Mexican, so they speak Spanish and they only speak Spanish to him. My husband is majority Spanish, a little bit of English, and I speak only Farsi to him, and my family speaks Farsi to him, and he goes to preschool and where he learns English. So he started, his newest phase actually is now, oh man. He started saying that around the house like, oh man. So all of 'em are going really well. So that's been really fun. It's keeping us busy and always something that I aspired for to be able to do for my kids. I love languages. So that's been a goal of mine that's coming to fruition. 

Eva Sheie (19:38):
It's not as hard as people think it is. It just is that having the discipline as the adults to know that you're only doing one of them. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (19:45):
A hundred percent. It's always the adult habits that, because I have a lot of friends who also started with Farsi or whatever language, and then they kind of fell off and they started speaking English and they're like, oh, they forgot. It's like, well, you're speaking English to them. So that's when it happens. And so we are constantly reminding ourselves like, okay, why are we doing this again? It's definitely harder for us too. We were born here, both of us, and so we're kind of like, why are we doing this? But in the end, it's actually really fun to see him when he sees other people speaking Farsi or Spanish and he's like, oh, they know our secret language. This is our secret language. And so it's really cool. 

Eva Sheie (20:22):
The pace at which kids learn is also mind numbing. I mean, we could not learn three languages today as adults. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (20:30):
No.

Eva Sheie (20:31):
But they totally can handle it. They can do it. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (20:33):
Definitely. 

Eva Sheie (20:34):
That's good on you. That's really fun that you're doing that. I love it. Before you had kids, was there anything you'd like to do other than go to school and go to work? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (20:44):
I mean, I love my job, so I just always wanted to be a doctor then I wanted to always be a surgeon. And so this is, I've been totally absorbed, but me and my husband like to travel. And I actually, in college, I traveled to Guatemala on a surgical mission, and then I went back to Guatemala in medical school for a one-on-one Spanish and volunteering for three months for one of the summers. And then whenever we were able to during residency, we would try to travel, but not so much. But we got some places. 

Eva Sheie (21:18):
Do you have plans to take the kids there someday? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (21:21):
To ?

Eva Sheie (21:22):
On missions? I was actually thinking about a surgeon that I spoke to recently who went two or three times a year on missions. It became his thing. And then when his kids got older, he started taking them along and they started serving. And that was what was in my head. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (21:38):
I've definitely thought about it. I haven't gone on one as a head and neck surgeon. These were all before. So I would have to find a group, and I know people go on cleft missions and stuff. I didn't have cleft in my training, so I definitely have to look into it. But I think just traveling in general is really important for them. So I remember I traveled a lot when I was younger. My parents would take us on these nice trips and I was telling my dad, I was like, dad, I don't remember any of those. And he was like, I spent so much time, money, energy, and you don't remember those. I was like, no, before seven, you don't remember too much. So I was like, all right, we're going to wait until they're a little bit bigger older so they can remember all the memories that we take them to. 

Eva Sheie (22:17):
That's a good plan. It's also, I don't know if you know this yet, because you just started having two instead of one, but they're not called vacation anymore. They're called trips. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (22:28):
Yes. They're just a new location to take care of your kids. Yeah. 

Eva Sheie (22:33):
When did they start becoming vacation again? I don't know the answer yet. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (22:37):
We went to San Diego earlier this month. Definitely a trip, not a vacation. 

Eva Sheie (22:42):
Well, if someone's listening today and they want to come find you or talk to you or potentially come see you, where should they look for more information about you? 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (22:52):
So my website, dr ghazizadeh.com. I'm updating it all the time, putting blog posts, so that's a good place to get some information about me. And then Instagram, my TikTok is very new and I'm not a TikTok star by any means. I'm still trying to learn the platform, but I think Instagram is mostly where I try and put most of my educational content and then a little bit about myself, show a little bit of my personality, and then my before and afters. So it's Dr_ghazizadeh on Instagram. 

Eva Sheie (23:23):
And I'll put both of those links in the show notes. And I am so glad that you joined us today. It was a really a pleasure getting to know you better. 

Dr. Ghazizadeh (23:31):
You as well. Thank you. 

Eva Sheie (23:37):
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.