Surgeon for the vain

"No one wants to be ugly. Everyone wants to appear beautiful." That message comes from the mouth of a surgeon whose job is to make women — and men — look and feel good with cosmetic surgery.

With skillful hands and fingers, he chisels jaws, noses and chins; augments small breasts and jaws; lifts and cuts noses, cheeks and breasts; removes unsightly fats from eyelids (a process called blepharo), stomachs (tummy tuck), backs, buttocks, thighs and hips or saddle bags; cuts and tightens sagging underarms (brachial wings) and love handles or strips of fat dangling like breasts from the spine to the lateral side of the body, removes facial and neck wrinkles, and adds body to thin lips or reduces too thick lips.

Dr. Gregorio Dela Cruz, 74, a native of Sorsogon, has been doing cosmetic surgery for more than 30 years in Sweden. He has seen patients walk with heavy hearts and faces into his private clinic, and drive away a few hours later looking years younger and with infinitely lighter spirits.

Renowned for his surgical skills, Dr. Dela Cruz has been asked by local cosmetic surgeons to come to Manila to perform on some cases like brachioplasty, or the removal of brachial wings or sagging skin and flesh from the underarm, a process that only a few doctors can do. Or the tummy tuck, which is the cutting off of apron-like skin from the stomach.

The surgeon showed us a picture of a 196-k Australian from whose stomach he had removed an 11-kilo slab. He had been brought to Manila by a doctor from Sydney whom Dr. Dela Cruz met in Shanghai; doctors Down Under had thought operating on the patient would be  too dangerous.

In this day and age, with the media and Hollywood drumming into our heads the idea that one must look young to be beautiful, cosmetic surgeons like Dr. Dela Cruz are heaven-sent. The doctor says that "as we age, it’s not only the face or skin that is growing old. Every part of the body grows old, from the hair to the heart, to the bones. Aging is a normal process. However, the sagging skin and the wrinkles can be treated with operative techniques to make people look younger."

Good surgeons like Dr. Dela Cruz develop techniques that not only make patients look young but show no telltale signs of surgical intervention on their faces or necks or bodies.

Dr. Dela Cruz, who is in Manila to deliver a lecture  at the 2nd Asia Pacific Academy Cosmetic Surgery International Conference (slated for March 2-4 at the Hotel Intercontinental Manila), believes in continuous study and research into cosmetic surgical procedures. He reads and  attends  congresses  to learn new techniques. "I scrutinize with care and see what I can incorporate into my old techniques. Time and again, I try to make one procedure after the next as perfect as can be."

The doctor has tested the procedures that impressed him on  nurses in a hospital he was connected with. He believes in sharing his own techniques himself, and have other doctors give him a blepharo (lifting of eyebrows).

Greg  finished  high school at the Nueva Caceres University in Naga City, and the medical course at the University of Santo Tomas in 1960, the year he passed the medical board exams. For nine months he was adjunct resident at the Camarines Sur Provincial Hospital in Naga City, and for three years, a municipal health officer in Lupi, Camarines Sur.

Looking for greener pastures, and the opportunity to further his knowledge in the surgical field, he migrated to Europe and became a junior resident at the Odense Amts og By Sygenhus (OAB) in Odense, Denmark for three years.  He  became a resident in the field of orthopedia in Soro Orthopedic Sygenhus, in Soro, Denmark up to 1970. He was then  appointed senior resident and eventually, assistant chief of Skive Sygehus in Skive, Denmark, from 1970 to 1976.  Then he became chief of surgery at the Kalix Lasarett in Kalix, Sweden, from 1976-1987.

Concurrently, he was also chief of the OBGyn, having had six years of residency training in the field in Denmark. He had a year each of training experiences in the fields of anesthetics and neuro surgery and collateral education, nine months in plastic surgery, and 18 months in thoracic surgery.

Standing 5’3", he was the smallest among the doctors and the only foreigner in the hospitals where he worked. "I had an inferiority complex in the beginning, but when I became chief of hospitals, when I talked everybody listened. I found out that it was not size, but what was in one’s head, that mattered."

In 1987, ten years ago, he retired from public service and set up his own clinic in Kalix, Sweden. His patients are from many parts of the world ‑ Norway and Sweden,  Iran, Lebanon, Australia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, who might have heard about him from his former patients.

Most of his women patients in Nordic countries go for reduction (mainly of noses), and they can’t understand why  Asians want higher noses, says Greg.

More men now are having face lifts, he says. Some opt for the enlargement of their penises, and others, for making them longer. Women, on the other hand, ask for perineoraphy (tightening, or, popularly, landscaping, of the vagina), and many want their breasts lifted.

Some women want to look like Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe or Angelina Jolie. The desired features are put together by the computer, but, says Dela Cruz, "it is questionable as to whether the surgeons can do what the computer can."

One can have as many skin surgeries as possible, depending on one’s skin. The Fizpatrick 1 and 2 skin types have less and less collagen as one ages, and operations on them can hold for just from one to four years, after which, another surgical intervention has to be made. The Fitzpatrick 3 skin type which has more collagen, can hold  longer  for 20 years or more, he says.

Greg says he uses local anesthesia on his patients, and they can go home after a cup of coffee.  

He would like to settle down in the Philippines. That’s good news  for people who want cosmetic surgery, and he being a skilled orthopedic doctor too, treatment for their bunions and frozen shoulders.

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