Happy New Year! 2011 looks like it is full of good tidings and opportunities.

Good news! Beginning in January Dr. Buchanan will personally do all of our Botox and facial fillers. You will now have a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon doing these important and delicate injections. His expert knowledge of the facial anatomy, and twenty-eight years of surgical experience will be a benefit for all of our patients. Our detailed records of all of your past visits are kept for a minimum of seven years. We will continue to use the latest and best injectable products available, like Juvederm Ultra XC and Juvederm Ultra Plus XC which were released in January 2010. Because of a new cross-linked formulation and the presence of Lidocaine (a local anesthetic), this product is less painful, goes in more smoothly, and may last up to one year with only one treatment. Botox remains the best product currently available to weaken muscle contractions and diminish “active” wrinkles in areas like the glabellar frown lines.

Giana enjoys her Aesthetician patients and receives raves about her facials, peels, and Microdermabrasions. Our Obagi skin care products remain quite popular, and we need to reorder supplies frequently.

Please visit our new breast surgery website at www.santabarbarabreast.com if you have not seen it already. We finished this site last fall and have posted lots of recent happy patients’ impressive before and after photographs. We schedule Operating Room surgeries on Tuesdays and Thursdays and enjoy the professionalism of the care provided by the Board Certified Anesthesiologists from the Anesthesia Medical Group of Santa Barbara, who also cover Cottage Hospital.

Our knowledgeable, thoughtful and caring staff looks forward to seeing you in 2011! Please email or call us if you have any questions or concerns.

All the best for the new year.

- Dr. Buchanan

Look your BEST for the holidays with December specials from Santa Barbara Plastic Surgery Center.  Our facial rejuvenation specials include savings on BOTOX ®, facial fillers and an “On-The-Go” glow facial peel treatment. Also, our board-certified plastic surgeon, Dr. David L. Buchanan, can create customized cosmetic procedure packages based on your specific aesthetic goals  The offers expire on 12/31/10, so call us today to arrange your appointment before the New Year!

In celebration of the 1st anniversary of Latisse eyelash enhancer, we are bringing you a special deal that could save you up to $100 on Botox® and Juvederm®! All you have to do is visit our office to purchase your Latisse solution kit and you will have a chance to get a rebate for up to $100 off on Botox® and Juvederm® if they are right for you.

Click on the ad below to enlarge and view all of the details or call our office to learn more! (805) 687-7336

“I am very pleased with the results of my treatment. People tell me that I look so happy and refreshed. I cannot say enough about Kathy and the way she treated me during the procedure. She was so patient and kind and with her talent, both with the treatment as well as her demeanor towards me, I sailed through it. We cowards need someone like Kathy to guide us through. Thank you and your staff for your kindness and understanding.”  – Sincerely, Injectable Patient

Welcome to our Blog!  In this section of our website, we will frequently add new information about our practice including the latest developments in plastic surgery procedures, products, and technology.  You can use the navigation on the left of the page to browse different categories and view information according to date.  We encourage you to come back often to view our latest posts amd  invite you to call or email our office with any questions.

1. His specialty is creating a NATURAL LOOK for patients seeking Facial and Eyelid Rejuvenation, Breast Augmentation, and Body Contouring.
2. He has performed thousands of successful surgeries over the past 25 years for many Happy Patients.
3. He has an exceptional word of mouth reputation, which brings our office a steady supply of referred new patients.
4. He believes in personalized care, limiting the surgeries he performs to approximately 300 cases per year.
5. He is an active and well respected member of the Santa Barbara community and has practiced locally for over 26 years.
6. He is a long time active member of the Cottage Hospital Surgery Department, and our office is conveniently located just one block from the Hospital.
7. He selects only Board Certified Anesthesiologists from Cottage Hospital to assist him in surgery.  (Many practices use a registered Nurse to cut costs).
8. He works out of his office Monday through Thursday and he or the office staff is available to see you in an emergency if the need arises.
9. He has been certified with the American Board of Plastic Surgery since 1983.
10. His talented, warm, caring staff will treat you with respect and do all in their power to make sure your experience goes as smoothly as possible from start to finish.
11. He cares about YOU as if you were a member of his own family.

What our office does if we have a request from somebody say from Australia that wants to come is we exchange a series of e-mails because we want to be specific about what procedure they would like to have done and whether or not they are a candidate for it and often I will ask them to send me photographs and talk about their health in general and make sure that if they do come there is a high probability that the surgery can be performed and we will arrange for accommodations here in Santa Barbara. We have several B&Bs that we work with. There are several wonderful hotels right on the water and we can help arrange the accommodations that are appropriate for that person and the person who is traveling with them. So, once we have determined that there is a high likelihood that the patient can come and be seen and operated on the next day or two, we will go ahead and schedule the visit. We will examine them when they arrive and then we will proceed with surgery the next day or the day after. We will have already arranged for accommodations for the next usually 10 to 14 days because I would like people to come and I like them to stay so that I can ensure that they have an uneventful recovery and what I do not do is let people fly in, have a big operation, fly home two days later, and say I will have the doctor at home take my stitches out. I just do not think that is good medicine. People come, they stay for a couple of weeks, and then they will leave and they will return home and usually I ask them to send me via e-mail photographs at about a month and to e-mail their photograph if there are any questions or concerns, and we usually follow up with e-mails and phone calls for a period of two to three months after surgery to make sure that everything is okay.

We have a wide variety of patients who come and many patients are local patients and they like to stay near home and have their surgery done. Some people come from a distance. We have had engineers come from Germany. We have had patients from Canada, from Mexico, from Australia, from a distance and usually the reason that people were coming from a distance is that they value a certain expertise that I have and they want me to do their particular type of surgery. Having said that, in virtually all the major cities of the world there are talented, conscientious, hard-working physicians and that is a choice that people have to make personally. Some people come to Santa Barbara because they want to have the Santa Barbara experience, by that I mean they would like to be recovering down by the beach and listening to the waves in a pleasant place that is sunny most of the time as opposed to in a hotel room somewhere in a big city. So those are sort of personal choices and it has to do also with the spouse or the friend that is coming to be with him and it is sometimes more fun for them if they can be in a resort area than in a city situation. So there are lots of ways to look at it and we have as I say local patients, patients from all over California, the West and then we have you know occasionally patients who come from Europe as well.

Most people that come to Santa Barbara are drawn to the beaches and Stearns Wharf is very pretty right centrally located with some good restaurants and views of the beach and the mountains and the whole Santa Barbara scene, so that is usually a good starting point. The El Encanto Hotel excellent view is up near the mission. The Santa Barbara Mission is definitely worth a trip with the Rose Gardens adjacent to it. The lower portion of State Street near the beach is full of cute shops and restaurants and Sushi places and we find a lot of people like to stroll back and forth on lower State Street. The Biltmore Hotel is a classic hotel, beautiful hotel and when you are feeling better, maybe towards the end of your trip that is a wonderful place to go sit on the verandah and have a light dinner. We find that that is interesting. The Santa Barbara Wine Country over the pass and into Santa Ynez is very popular and if people have enough energy that is a fun trip, a wine tasting trip. Often that is something they do later when they come back, not right after their surgery. But those are a few of the highlights that a lot of people like to see.