No.15 Cosmetic essay by Dr. Lee Jin soo- Reasons for increasing time of surgeries

There are people who advertise that they do double jaw surgery and ASO(protruding mouth surgery) quickly.

If you have little experience with any surgery, it takes time to perform the surgery because you are hesitant or not proficient. So it's true that if you're familiar with the surgery with repeated surgeries, you'll be able to shorten the operation time. People who advertise that surgery is fast probably want to emphasize to this point. But this reduction in surgery time happens when you don't do surgeries that much. If you continue to perform the same surgery for more than a few years or decades, the operation time will not continue to decrease.

In my case, for example, when I was doing a double jaw surgery, my surgery time steadily reduced until the cumulative number of surgeries was about 50. In the long run, the operation time was reduced until about six months. And the time it took to do a double jaw surgery (from the beginning of the incision to the end of the sutures) was reduced to an hour.

But what's interesting is that if you operate at the peak of 50 cumulative surgeries, it starts to increase the time a little bit. Actually, I'm getting used to it and more proficient, so I had to spend less time on it, but surprisingly I've gotten a little bit more.

There are several reasons why time is increasing gradually.

First, you become more attentive and recognize more areas to be touched. If you continue to think about how to operate to produce better results, you'll have more attention to the surgery. You wouldn't have known it before, but you're going to find  parts that you didn't know. More you do surgeries, more you are going to recognize.

Second is that when you're doing the surgery, you'll pursue a little slower than faster. Since the bone surgery is particularly important in reducing the risk and side effects of surgery, especially by touching only bones and minimizing damage to the surrounding tissue, it takes a little longer to perform surgery while protecting the surrounding bone tissue as much as possible.

Finally, when the surgery is completed, the time of the operation is increased by adding the most precise trimming process once again.

Now, I've had thousands of surgeries, and it's taking me more than 50 percent more than I did when I had 50 times. Now, of course, if I decide to do the surgery with the shortest time ever, I can do it again. But in order to do that, I have to skip all the procedures that I've been doing thousands of surgeries that I've concerned about. I don't think I'll ever be able to skip the process of care, so I'll never be able to do it again.

So when I see someone who boasts of doing surgery quickly, I wonder what they want to talk about.

In fact, the person who wants to finish the surgery the fastest is the person who does it like me. Sometimes I get exhausted and I'm tempted to finish the surgery as soon as possible. But I try to do my best in surgery even at that moment.

So I'm proud of my not-so-fast surgery. Because the operation time tells the result of my efforts for the surgery.