Dr. Anthony Perkins, MD

Dr. Perkins trained at McGill in Montreal, completed the integrated plastic surgery programme there, and finished with a year-long cosmetic surgery fellowship at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. Eighteen years on, his Goals list is built around the tummy tuck, the Brazilian Butt Lift and full body contouring. He consults in English or in French. Below is the detail patients want before booking, including the checks worth running on any surgeon.

Dr. Anthony Perkins, MD took his medical degree at McGill University in Montreal and stayed on for the integrated plastic surgery programme at the McGill University Health Centre. That is a training route covering the surgical and the non-surgical sides of the specialty rather than one or the other. A one-year clinical fellowship in cosmetic surgery at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary followed.

Eighteen years later the Goals list is abdominal and body work: the tummy tuck, the Brazilian Butt Lift, FlexSculpt liposuction, full body contouring. He sees patients at the clinics across New York.

He has authored medical papers and presented research at local and national conferences. Not every cosmetic surgeon does, and it tends to mark a practice that keeps pace with the literature rather than with the marketing. Four professional bodies covering aesthetic and cosmetic medicine list him as an affiliate.

He is fluent in French, and that matters more than it reads. A consultation is where you learn what is achievable and what the risks are, and taking that in through the language you actually think in is worth asking about at the point of booking. Patients who have been through one in a second language often describe realising afterwards how much of it they simply nodded along to.

The Goals profile is built around abdominal work in particular rather than contouring in general. That is a narrower claim than most surgeon pages make, and narrower claims are usually the more useful kind. Ask him what share of his week is abdominal. A surgeon who has deliberately narrowed will know the number.

He is licensed to practise where he operates for Goals. Licences are issued state by state, all of them public, and a board lookup takes roughly two minutes. Any surgeon should be able to name the states they hold without needing to check.

Do that lookup yourself rather than accepting it on trust, for this surgeon and every other. The searches are free and open to anyone, returning licence status, issuing state, and any public action on record. Search the name alongside words like reviews, complaints and lawsuits as well, and read what comes back on sites the practice has no control over. It is not rude. A practice that discourages it has told you something.

The training record checks out the same way: medical degree from McGill, the integrated plastic surgery programme at the McGill University Health Centre, the cosmetic surgery fellowship at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. Dates and institutions either survive a search or they do not. Find him listed on the surgical team page with everyone else.

One thing worth knowing if you are consulting in French: ask whether the written plan, the consent form and the aftercare instructions come in French too, not only the conversation. Consent you have not fully read is not consent, and the paperwork is usually the part that stays in English by default. The same goes for anything put in front of you to sign on the morning itself.

Raise revisions early, before you have any reason to. Ask about timing, what the second operation would involve, how the cost is handled and who performs it, since that is not automatically the surgeon who did the first one. Vagueness is itself an answer.

A tummy tuck removes loose skin and fat through a longer incision and tightens the muscle wall underneath. That second part is the one people overlook. Abdominal muscles that separated during pregnancy do not come back together with exercise, and no amount of fat removal reaches them.

FlexTuck reaches abdominal definition through a shorter incision, working on fat and skin quality more directly. Less tissue gets disturbed, so recovery is quicker and the scar is smaller. What it does not do is repair a separated muscle wall or take up significant skin laxity.

So the choice is not really about how big a scar you are willing to accept. It is about whether your problem sits on the surface or underneath it. Examination settles that, not preference. Some patients arrive wanting the shorter route and hear they need the full operation. Others come in expecting the full procedure and are offered the smaller one. If muscle separation does not come up, raise it yourself. Plenty of patients have it and have never once been told.

Abdominal work pairs naturally with contouring, since FlexSculpt can take the flanks and back in the same session and treat the torso as a single shape. A mommy makeover extends that to breast work where the total operating time permits.

That total is a hard limit rather than a scheduling preference. A plan exceeding it gets divided over two sittings, and you want that raised at the consultation rather than on the day.

The Brazilian Butt Lift differs from a standard one by layering: grafts placed at several depths for fuller projection that holds longer. Its raw material is whatever the contouring half of the same operation removes, which is why they run together. A single anesthetic, a single recovery, a single absence from work.

Grafted fat does not all take. A share is reabsorbed across the first few months, and whatever survives is where the result settles. You should be given that figure as a range beforehand, not afterwards, and told plainly that it varies person to person.

Candidacy comes down to donor fat and a weight that has held steady, because a graft keeps the habits of the tissue it came from and rises and falls with the rest of you. Without both in place, expect to hear about a different plan or a later date.

On the breast he does augmentation and lift, and fat transfer augmentation sits naturally beside the contouring. For the face and neck there is chin and neck contouring, a smaller share of his volume than body work. Coming in mainly for that? Ask him to put a percentage on it.

Talk about scarring specifically, whatever you end up having. How obvious a scar becomes depends on where it was put and how it was closed, then on your own healing and a year of care. Get shown the incision positions and what they typically look like at twelve months.

Match your goal to his busiest work. Abdominal problems are his territory: tummy tuck, FlexTuck, reshaping after a pregnancy or after weight loss. Something else and you should hear it said in the room, with a colleague named who does that work weekly.

Then ask about the room itself, which most patients never think to do. Who else will be present during surgery. Whether a chaperone is available for any unclothed part of the process, including photography and surgical marking. Who you will see at follow-up, and whether it will be him. These are ordinary questions and they should get ordinary answers. A practice that finds any of them awkward has answered a different question.

Ask for a number rather than an adjective on volume. How many of your specific operations did he perform in the last twelve months. Experienced is not a number. Forty is a number.

Second opinions repay the afternoon they cost. A second opinion sharpens your sense of what is possible and of what a sane plan looks like. Two assessments reached separately that match are worth more than one delivered with conviction.

Bring photographs you like and expect a straight reading. The person in a photograph has a different skeleton, different skin, and usually a different quantity of fat to work with. Sorting the surgical part of a picture from the part that is somebody else's build is a good deal of what the appointment is for.

Start with the one most patients do not know they can ask for. You are entitled to a chaperone during any part of a consultation or procedure that involves being unclothed, and that includes photography and surgical marking. Request it at the point of booking rather than on the day. It is a routine ask, it should be met without friction, and the way a practice responds tells you a good deal.

Nothing is performed outside an accredited U.S. facility, whichever procedure you are booking. What accreditation certifies is inspected rather than advertised: how instruments are cleaned, which emergency equipment is stocked, how many staff cover a case, how anesthesia gets watched. That external sign-off is what a cheaper package abroad cannot produce.

Fat transfer runs to a fixed protocol at Goals facilities. Grafts stay subcutaneous, never deeper, with ultrasound following the cannula throughout. Nothing else in modern BBL safety carries the same weight.

Nothing is dated until screening is complete. A blood panel, cardiac risk, a medication review, questions about your daily habits. Anything reading outside safe limits should stop the date until it is fixed, not routed around it.

Carrying additional weight turns candidacy into a numbers question. The workup decides between operating now and splitting the job into two safer halves. Staging is not the lesser option. It is the same work with more room around it.

The first appointment should be work rather than sales. He examines the area, checks skin quality and looks for muscle separation, then says straight out what your anatomy permits. Generally the before & after gallery is open alongside, so an outcome is shown on a comparable frame. You should leave with a written plan and nothing booked.

Before you leave, say the plan back in your own words and see whether he agrees with your version. It is the cheapest test available for whether you actually understood it, and it catches the gap between hearing something and following it. That applies whichever language the appointment happened in. Anything you cannot repeat back, ask him to write down.

Take the plan home before agreeing on a date. Decisions made against a clock, or against a discount expiring that afternoon, deserve revisiting once you are home.

The opening fortnight after surgery outweighs everything that follows. Garments, positioning, limits on activity, each with a physiological reason behind it. Where a BBL is part of the operation, position outranks all of it.

Follow-up carries on through the first year, because contouring keeps settling for months. Swelling clears patchily rather than evenly, so a contour looking lopsided at six weeks has generally evened out by six months. Find out ahead of booking which clinician staffs those visits, and what number reaches one in between.

Have the numbers in front of you before committing. A consultation should set out the surgeon's fee, the facility, anesthesia, garments and every follow-up visit, so nothing appears later that was absent from the list. Operating time and complexity vary between patients, which is why the quote is assembled for your case rather than lifted from a rate card.

Instalments run through financing partners over several term lengths, and applications generally get answered within the day. Read the agreement itself rather than the summary, and ask for it in French if that is easier. What is on offer right now is published on the financing page.

Recovery carries a cost too. Days not worked, the garments, every follow-up appointment, and frequently another adult in the house through week one.

None of it replaces the appointment. Book it, bring your history and your questions, and get a straight answer on what is realistic.

Put the revision question directly: what would it cost, and who absorbs it? More quotes omit that than include it, and it becomes the only relevant figure if the situation ever arises.