Bradley Calobrace, MD, is Board Certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. He received his MD from the Indiana University School of Medicine and several residencies in general and plastic surgery at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and a Cosmetic Surgery/Breast Surgery Fellowship in Nashville, Tennessee.
As a tireless innovator, Dr. Calobrace takes a patient first philosophy. “I think my most enduring philosophy concerning my patients is that I truly care about each one. I try to never lose sight of what is most important in my practice and why I went into medicine… excellence in patient care. That philosophy has become the guiding principal for how my staff and I care for our patients.
Dr. Calobrace is considered one of the new leaders in the field of cosmetic breast surgery. He has accumulated a vast experience over the last decade, performing over 400 breast surgeries a year. In his thriving cosmetic surgery practice, he performs approximately 1000 major cosmetic procedures each year, including facial surgery, body contouring, breast surgery, hair transplantation and post-bariatric rejuvenation.
He recently established CaloSpaMD, an innovative medical spa concept, and opened a 16,000 square foot facility combining his cosmetic surgery practice, surgical center, and comprehensive medical spa.
Tummy Tuck of Today Means Less Pain & Quicker Recovery
Patients who do their research often read about the pain involved in an abdominoplasty, also known as a tummy tuck. Tightening the muscles in the abdomen is a serious procedure that can involve high levels of pain, but nothing modern science can’t handle. Dr. M. Bradley Calobrace of Louisville, Kentucky discusses the use of the OnQ pain pump, a tool utilized by surgeons to reduce pain and help patients rebound quickly after major surgery.
The Tummy Tuck
“A tummy tuck is my favorite procedure – and I believe the patient’s favorite, too – due to the dramatic changes that can be done to the body,” says Dr. Calobrace.The heart of the procedure is the reconstruction of the abdominal muscle that is stretched and torn whenever a woman goes through pregnancy or when someone has lost a considerable amount of weight. Excess skin and fat is surgically removed in order to tighten the muscle of the abdominal wall. The stretching of skin throughout the procedure causes a large amount of pain and a lingering soreness in the muscle that used to require a few days stay in a hospital. “Eight years ago, my practice considered this inpatient surgery as we needed to allow a patient to recover over the course of a few days with steady doses of narcotics to keep them comfortable,” notes Calobrace. “However, since the introduction of the OnQ pain pump, the surgery is now outpatient with the patient immediately reentering their daily routine with very little pain.”
How the OnQ Pain Pump has Changed Tummy Tuck Recoveries
“The pain pump is an autonomous device that injects anesthetic medication at regular intervals deep into the disturbed tissues,” says Calobrace. “Instead of having to utilize narcotics to keep the pain at bay, the pain pump keeps the affected areas numb so the patient can recover much quicker.” This method has a variety of benefits for a recovering patient, such as:
- Treatment of pain with numbing medication instead of narcotics, allows the patient to maintain alertness and energy
- With the affected areas numb, the patient can immediately begin to walk and move about, which decreases the chance of blood clots
“The benefits of the pain pump are felt by both myself and my patient,” says Calobrace. “The pump makes the patient’s recovery a more comfortable process and assures me that the most common complications will be kept at bay by the patient immediately being active.”
The OnQ Pain Pump Makes Recovery Faster and Comfortable!
The pain pump medication lasts for 3-4 days, by which time the patient has passed through the worst period of pain. Due to the ability to start being active immediately after surgery, recovery time is drastically cut and allows patient to reenter their normal life quickly. Calobrace concludes, “We have really reversed the experience of a tummy tuck with the simple use of a pain pump.”
NeoGraft Takes Hair to New Heights
The NeoGraft procedure updates the current surgical hair transplantation scene with the use of an automated device wielded by surgeons to remove individual hair follicles and transplant them to other areas of the scalp. The high degree of precision available to surgeons with the NeoGraft device allows follicular transfer procedures multiple advantages, including no visible scarring, no post op pain and a more even final product. Board certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Brad Calobrace of Louisville, Kentucky, explains the benefits of this new technology.
For Those Looking to Grow New Hair and Avoid Visible Scars
“The standard hair transplantation method, strip harvesting, works very well at moving active hair follicles to areas of baldness, but comes at a physical price,” says Calobrace. A strip of hair follicles is removed from the back of the head and moved to areas where follicles have succumbed to genetic predisposition for baldness. The skin where the strip of active follicles was removed is then sutured together. This procedure inevitably leads to a large, linear scar. While the transplanted hair follicles will grow at a spot formerly devoid of hair, a large scar will be visible on the back of the patient’s head.
In addition, the immediate recovery period of the operation produces considerable pain and discomfort, due to the skin being stretched to fill the gap of the removed skin strip. The NeoGraft procedure reverses these issues by utilizing an automated machine to precisely extract individual follicles from the patient’s scalp.
Precision, Precision, Precision
Before, follicular unit extraction (FUE) success maxed out at the surgeon’s ability to manually remove and replace hair follicles. With the NeoGraft device, surgeons are given a tool that can be used to precisely harvest individual follicles all the same size. This precision allows follicles to be removed from varying areas on the back of the head, rather than having to remove an entire strip of skin. Calobrace says NeoGraft makes it possible for surgeons to remove and transplant up to 2000 grafts in one sitting, rather than 3-400 in traditional strip grafting. “The ability to transplant more at one time leads to denser, fuller hair when it begins to grow back in,” says Calobrace.
NeoGraft is an Elegant Solution for Women Suffering Hair Thinning
“The NeoGraft procedure works especially great for women,” says Dr. Calobrace. Hair loss in woman is generally different from men, as the issue is a global thinning of hair, rather than a receding hairline. Utilizing the NeoGraft device, surgeons can remove active follicles and implant them individually all over the scalp to make the patient’s hair denser. Calobrace says the scars are small, and therefore virtually indiscernible when taken and implanted in various areas, rather than all in one. The recovery for women is even better he says, because long hair can be used to cover the area where the hair was removed.
How About Results?
After the procedure, the hair in the transplanted follicles will fall out over a period of weeks and take a few months to begin growing. “At five or six months, the patients are worried that they are not getting all that they hoped to get,” says Calobrace. This delay in results is the hardest part of the entire procedure. Calobrace assures his patients not to worry because “at nine months or a year, they’re shocked at how much hair they have.”
NeoGraft: The Future of Hair Transplantation
“NeoGraft is a tremendously exciting procedure for surgeons and patients alike,” says Calobrace. “The ease of the procedure and recovery, matched with the precise and unrivaled results, gives all of those suffering hair loss hope to regrow hair without side effects or physical scarring. It’s few and far between to ever find a patient that is not thrilled.”
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