Dr. Christopher Johnson, MD

Dr. Christopher Johnson graduated from Harvard Medical School at the top of his class and holds a Master of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford. His surgical training ran through general surgery, a fellowship in surgical critical care and trauma at Cedars-Sinai, and a fellowship in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Massachusetts. His cosmetic training was at Lenox Hill.

That is an unusually long route, and the trauma fellowship in the middle of it is the part worth noticing. Critical care is where a surgeon learns what a body will tolerate when there is no margin, and that knowledge does not switch off when the operation becomes elective.

Alongside the New York practice, he has performed more than two thousand operations without charge in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Haiti and Tanzania. Cleft lip and palate repairs, reconstructive work, over a hundred operations in Port-au-Prince in the weeks after the earthquake. Almost no cosmetic surgeon has a record like it, and he describes it as an obligation rather than an achievement.

He speaks English, French, Russian, Spanish and Swahili, and he sees Goals patients at the Bronx clinic. His stated aim is enhancement that reads as natural. Results nobody can point at.

That philosophy is easier to state than to hold to, because it means turning down work. A surgeon who will only do what disappears into your face is a surgeon who says no more often than most, and it is worth arriving at the consultation prepared for that answer.

One state issues one licence, the record is open, and confirming it through the state medical board costs about two minutes. Dr. Johnson practises in New York, so that is the board to search.

Do that yourself rather than taking it on trust, and not only for this surgeon. Board and licence lookups are free and open to anyone. They will tell you the status of a licence, the state that issued it and whether any public action is recorded against it. It is also worth searching a surgeon's name alongside terms like reviews and complaints and reading what comes back on sources the practice does not control.

On training, the distinction worth understanding is between a residency and a fellowship. A residency is the core specialty training; a fellowship is additional, competitive and narrower. His record holds two of them. Trauma and critical care first, then plastic and reconstructive surgery, and every institution named is checkable. His profile sits alongside the rest of the surgical team.

Ask what a revision would involve long before you need one, and ask whose hands it would be in. Uncommon without being rare is the honest frequency in contouring, and having the timeline, the method and the cost settled in advance takes a quiet worry out of the recovery year. Vagueness on that question is information in itself, and a clear answer at the planning stage is a reasonable thing to expect from anyone.

Titles are worth understanding before you compare surgeons. Licensure, credentials, fellowships and years in practice describe overlapping but different things, and a longer list does not automatically mean a better outcome for the procedure you want.

Body contouring is the centre of his cosmetic practice. FlexSculpt takes abdomen, flanks and back as one uninterrupted surface rather than three jobs stitched together. Treat them separately and the seams show.

The Brazilian Butt Lift differs from a standard BBL by layering: grafts set at several depths, for projection that is fuller and lasts longer. The fat it uses is exactly what the contouring half of the operation takes out. One anesthetic, one recovery, two areas changed. That is one operation seen from both ends, not two sold together.

Expect to lose a share of the graft. Some of it is reabsorbed across the opening months, and whatever lives through that is where your result settles. You should be handed that proportion as a range beforehand, not afterwards.

Candidacy depends on enough donor fat, skin that will cooperate once volume is removed, and a stable weight. Liposuction changes shape rather than weight, and it is not a substitute for losing it. Skin decides more of these cases than fat does. The fat half is predictable. The skin half is not: retraction depends on your age, on inherited elasticity, and on how much stretching that skin has already absorbed. Where laxity runs deep, J-Plasma or an excisional procedure is the better answer.

Ask to be shown, on your own body, which areas are being treated and roughly what the change will be. A surgeon marking up an abdomen in front of a mirror gives you far more information than any volume figure will.

Facial work is a substantial part of his practice, and chin and neck contouring is the procedure his patients mention most often. A double chin is one of those things people carry for decades before doing anything about it.

On the breast he performs reduction and lift, and fat transfer augmentation sits naturally alongside contouring, since one session can harvest in one area and build in another. Reduction is among the highest-satisfaction procedures in the specialty, because the reasons for it are usually physical rather than aesthetic.

Two routes exist for the abdomen. One is the tummy tuck for pronounced laxity or a separated muscle wall, and FlexTuck when a smaller incision does the job. A mommy makeover brings the two together in a single sitting wherever the operating clock allows.

Scarring deserves its own conversation whichever procedure you choose. Expect to be shown where incisions will fall and how they usually mature across the first year. Incision placement and closure techniques shape how visible a scar becomes, but genetics and aftercare carry weight too.

Arm contouring is available where the arms rather than the torso are the concern, and gynecomastia surgery for male chest contouring.

The best reason to choose a surgeon is a match between their highest-volume work and the result you want. If your goal is body or facial contouring, a BBL, or breast surgery, his practice sits there. Anything beyond it should be said out loud during the consultation, with a name attached of somebody who does it regularly.

The thing to know before you book is that his stated aim is restraint. Enhancement nobody can point at is a narrower target than most patients arrive asking for, and it rules some requests out. That reads as caution in the room and as judgment a year later.

Language is worth raising when you book rather than on the day. He consults in five. The appointment is where the achievable gets separated from the wished-for, and where risk gets explained. Absorbing that in your second language costs you something. Bringing a relative who only speaks the first one costs you more.

Second opinions are worth the time. Bring the photographs you have been saving and expect a blunt reading. Whoever is in them has another frame, other skin and usually another history, and separating what is surgical from what is simply somebody else's build is a fair part of why the appointment exists.

Timing matters more than most patients expect. Booking around a wedding or a holiday squeezes recovery into a space it does not fit, and a surgeon worth having will say so rather than take a date that leaves you let down.

Every procedure takes place in an accredited U.S. facility. Accreditation means an inspector has worked a defined list rather than the clinic publishing one: sterilisation, emergency equipment, staffing ratios, anesthesia monitoring. That outside check is the whole difference between operating here and chasing a cheaper package abroad.

One rule governs fat transfer and it does not bend. Grafts stay above the muscle and never below it, with ultrasound following the cannula from start to finish. No other precaution in modern BBL work counts for as much, and there is no case where it is skipped.

Screening happens before any date is set. Blood work, cardiac risk, medications and lifestyle all feed into whether a patient is cleared, and where a result falls outside safe parameters the case is postponed until it is addressed rather than worked around. A surgeon with a trauma and critical care background has spent years making exactly that call under far worse conditions.

For patients carrying more weight, candidacy is a medical question rather than a judgment. The evaluation decides whether a procedure can be done safely at your current weight or whether staging it makes better sense.

Facility standards matter most in situations you hope never to meet. Such centres stock airway equipment for emergencies, staff a monitored recovery bay, and put their teams through the drills instead of assuming the response.

Your first appointment is a working session rather than a sales pitch. He looks over the area, reads the skin and the donor fat, sets out what your anatomy permits and gives a plain account of the outcome. The before & after gallery is normally open at that point too, putting the outcome on a body built like yours. You go home holding a written plan, with nothing booked.

Recovery starts the moment surgery ends, and the first two weeks carry more weight than anything after. Compression garments, positioning and lymphatic drainage are prescribed for concrete physiological reasons. Where a BBL is involved, positioning matters above everything else.

Follow-up runs through the first year, because contouring keeps refining for months. Swelling resolves unevenly and something that looks asymmetric at six weeks often settles on its own by six months. He steps in only once the tissue has genuinely stopped changing.

Longer term, results move with your body. Transplanted fat carries on behaving like the tissue it left, so a sizeable weight swing pulls your outcome along with it. Keep the weight level and keep moving, and what was built stays built.

Bring someone with you to the consultation if you can. A second set of ears catches the details that slip when you are nervous, and the written plan is easier to think through at home when two people heard the same thing said in the room.

Cost should be clear before you commit. A consultation includes a full breakdown covering the surgeon's fee, the facility fee, anesthesia, garments and follow-up visits, so nothing surfaces unannounced later. Because operating time and complexity vary, quotes are built for your procedure rather than pulled off a price list.

Ask specifically what a revision would cost and who carries it. That is the number most likely to be missing from a quote and the one that matters if it is ever needed.

Payment can be spread monthly through financing partners across several term lengths, and applications are typically decided before the day is out. Read what you are signing rather than the summary of it. Current plans are listed on the financing page, worth reviewing before your consultation so you arrive with questions ready.

Plan for the whole timeline rather than the surgery date alone: time away from work, garments, follow-up visits and sometimes help at home in the first week. Everything on this page is context. The plan gets built in the room.