Sounds like a subject line on an email solicitation, doesn’t it? And who hasn’t received those enticing communications about unclaimed funds in some Nigerian bank?

Still, we also know what happened with Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn—social media paradigms have been and continue to be created. Virtually every medical professional (especially plastic surgeons) have internet presence in the form a practice or at least institutional website, not to mention multiple listings when our individual names are searched. No one wants to be left behind as the “next big thing” is developed. This is particularly true if you’re just starting out in practice, building your elective cosmetic surgery practice, or simply trying to recover from the economic downturn that impacted many of us over the past several years.

So let me tell you about a site that I discovered when one of my own patients wrote a less-than-glowing review of surgery I had performed for him in 2009. 

This story, however,  starts when my partner and I hired an on-line consultant nearly two years later in late 2010, and his research into reviews about me uncovered this one site, and this old, but devastating (to me) review.

In 2009, my patient was in his first week after rhinoplasty and liposuction of his abdomen, and had been doing on-line “research” into possible complications. (Who knows why—he was doing well, and continued to do so long after the…