Patient decisions
What Kind of Plastic Surgery Can Men Have?
Men can consider a broad range of aesthetic procedures, with the choice guided by anatomy, health and personal goals. In this episode, Darren M. Smith, MD, a plastic surgeon in New York City, gives an overview of options for chin and neck contour, chest fullness, the abdomen and waist, muscle definition and facial lines.
In this episode.
Episode summary
Men can consider a broad range of aesthetic procedures, with the choice guided by anatomy, health and personal goals. In this episode, Darren M. Smith, MD, a plastic surgeon in New York City, gives an overview of options for chin and neck contour, chest fullness, the abdomen and waist, muscle definition and facial lines.
The discussion's central theme is matching the treatment to the tissue involved. Fat, glandular breast tissue, skin laxity and muscle activity call for different assessments.
Key takeaways
🔬 Chin fullness and loose neck skin are separate concerns.
Dr. Smith discusses liposuction for fat, selected skin treatments and neck lift surgery when the degree of laxity warrants that discussion.
🔎 Chest fullness needs evaluation first.
The episode emphasizes considering possible medical causes before planning gynecomastia surgery, or male breast reduction.
🔬 Fat and glandular tissue may need different approaches.
Liposuction is discussed for fat, while glandular tissue may require excision. Excess skin adds another planning consideration.
🔎 Treatment can be staged.
Dr. Smith describes selected chest cases in which he reassesses skin contraction after the initial procedure before deciding whether further skin treatment is needed.
🔎 The overview extends beyond surgery.
Original Emsculpt is discussed for muscle conditioning, and Botox for forehead lines, crow's feet and frown lines. These address different goals from fat removal.
Questions this episode answers
Can liposuction alone treat an enlarged male chest?
It depends on what is creating the fullness. The recording distinguishes excess fat from glandular breast tissue and loose skin. An examination and evaluation of possible underlying causes help determine which approach, if any, is appropriate.
Can chest and waist contouring be considered together?
Yes. Dr. Smith discusses combining chest reduction with abdominal and waist liposuction in selected patients. Whether to combine or stage treatment requires an individual plan rather than assuming one package fits every person.
This 2020 recording describes device preferences and recovery examples from that period. Rapid return-to-work or exercise examples are not a personal recovery schedule, and original Emsculpt should not be confused with later device versions. For additional background on chest surgery, see the ASPS overview of gynecomastia surgery.
🔗 Related information
Explore liposuction for men, chin liposuction, Botox information, or request a consultation with Dr. Smith in New York City.
Originally released September 19, 2020. Show notes updated September 30, 2026. This is general education. Current recommendations, suitability, risks and expected results require an individual assessment.
Original show notes
Board certified NYC plastic surgeon Dr. Darren Smith introduces the rapidly growing field of male plastic surgery here.
Read the conversation.
[00:08] I'm board certified New York City plastic surgeon Dr. Darren Smith and this is plastic surgery before and after. Your source for the real deal about plastic surgery procedures news about trends in aesthetic medicine and candid sessions with industry insiders. We hope you enjoy today's episode. What kind of plastic surgery can men have? Well the answer is pretty much any kind they want. And in fact, male plastic surgery has been increasing in popularity a great deal over the past several years is kind of the taboo of self-care and caring about your appearance and doing something about it for men has really been falling by the wayside and men are becoming more and more involved in doing things for themselves and their appearance and plastic surgery and aesthetic medicine are really coming to the fore in a lot of male efforts to achieve their aesthetic goals. I'm not going to cover the entire gamut of male plastic surgery in this episode because it's just too vast a topic and we'll come back to some specifics in future episodes but I just wanted to give kind of a bird's-eye view of some of the most popular procedures.
[01:25] that men are having in our practice in New York City just to give you an idea of the things that guys are doing for themselves in kind of our modern aesthetically awakened world. Just kind of working from the top of the body down one of far and away the most popular things men are doing is having procedures to take care of double chins and these are things that range from liposuction to get rid of fatty access that could be causing a double chin to things like radio frequency skin tightening with Acutight or face tight if there is an issue with loose skin of a mild to moderate severity in the chin and neck area and this can be combined with liposuction and sometimes men are having neck lifts if there is severe skin laxity in the neck region. And a chiseled jawline is really always in fashion, so isolated neck lifts in men are becoming more and more popular. Moving down on the body, Men are often coming in and asking about procedures to reduce the size of their breasts. So male breast development is called gynecomastia, and this can be caused by several different factors. And if we've eliminated any kind of medical problems that could be causing gynecomastia, and we're just left with an excess of soft tissue on the chest, it's appropriate to address this issue surgically.
[03:03] And there are a few different ways that we can approach this, but we always take a problem based approach with this procedure and really all of the procedures that we perform. And specifically here, we're going to look at the cause of the excess. chest tissue and this can either be an excess of fat or an excess of actual breast tissue and In cases of fatty excess we can treat this very effectively with liposuction Specifically, I really like vaser liposuction which uses ultrasound energy and we discussed this in more depth in an earlier episode and on the other hand if there is a true access of breast tissue, we can address this by making a small incision under the areola at the border of the areola and the regular breast skin and excising the excess tissue.
[03:56] Now, if there is also significant skin laxity or excess skin, in addition to excess fat or excess breast tissue, we can remove this with a series of incisions, or if there is less severe chest skin laxity, we can often take care of this with body type radiofrequency skin tightening. And what we'll do in a lot of cases is actually plan to stage these procedures because sometimes it can be difficult to tell how much of the problem is due to skin excess. So in these cases, we'll do as much as we can with either liposuction or excision of actual breast tissue, and then wait a few months and see how much the skin contracts before we commit to a procedure to actually cut away excess skin or shrink that skin with the body type device.
[04:45] Moving down on the trunk, a lot of men are very interested in achieving a V-shaped torso. And one of the great ways to do this is with liposuction of the abdomen and liposuction of the waist. And we've discussed liposuction in a great deal in earlier episodes, so I won't go through it in any depth here aside from to say that it's a very straightforward procedure. that you can have performed on a Friday and really be back at a desk job in most cases by Monday and be back to a light workout in the gym by the Wednesday after the procedure. And in some cases we can achieve a really dramatic body shape transformation by combining a gynecomastia reduction in men that are a little heavier on top than they want to be with liposuction of the abdomen, the waist, and together those two things can really make a profound change in a man's overall body contour.
[05:41] The other thing that we're doing more and more of in men is actually building muscle mass with a device called Emsculpt which we've also addressed in great detail in previous episodes. We won't go into it in any depth here aside to say that it uses highly focused electromagnetic energy to work your muscles and this can be used almost anywhere in the body. It's FDA cleared for use in the abdomen as well as the arms and the legs and it can... generate 20,000 contractions in 30 minutes and we can really do a lot with this to enhance muscle tone and we can combine this with liposuction to really get some great definition. Body tight also is very popular with men not just for gynecomastia but really in several parts of the body. It's really big in the abdomen and also we can use this to tighten up the arms and the legs to really show off the muscle definition and physique that you've been working hard to develop at the gym. And then finally moving away from surgery Botox is huge in men and we'll often call this Brotox and Men love this either for farhead lines or crows feet that conform next to the eyes And also for the deep furrows or 11 lines that conform between the eyebrows So this is a very brief very kind of bird's-eye view of what some men are doing To take advantage of the services and procedures that are available in the aesthetic medicine and plastic surgery space, but there's a lot more to this and a lot more depth that we could go into in future episodes. So please let us know if you'd like to hear more about this and we'll certainly come out with those episodes to further address this really exciting and rapidly growing area of plastic surgery. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, share the show, and head over to darrensmithmd.com for more real-world plastic surgery talk.
Sources and context.
Original Captivate episode. Original release date: 2020-09-19. The recording is the source for the transcript and episode discussion. Later context in the written summary is identified separately.
Behind the conversation.
Darren M. Smith, MD, FACS