Dr. Clayon Moliver is a board-certified plastic surgeon who specializes in reconstructive and aesthetic surgery. After starting his practice in 1992, Dr. Moliver has found that most of his patients come to him as referrals from other patients -- something he credits to his determination to get to know the patient, answer any question they may have and make them feel as comfortable as possible throughout the process. Haute Beauty caught up with the renowned plastic surgeon who dished on the biggest misconceptions, most requested procedures, great achievements and more.
My greatest achievement...
There are personal achievements and professional achievements. On a personal level, I have been married 38 years and I think that’s quite an achievement. I’m very happy in my marriage. I have two great kids and a grandchild and another one on the way. They have turned out to be good, good people. In terms of life goals, I don’t think it can get much better than that.
Professionally I have been very blessed. I have a private practice that I enjoy very much. I enjoy interacting with my patients. These patients have been my patients for 25 years. In the past 10 years, I have started training residents on a part-time basis. They come and work with me and we have started writing papers together. Professionally that has been overwhelming the best thing I have done. Going to journal club with them, writing papers with them, and having them operate with me while offering pearls of wisdom. I have found that very rewarding and I have a whole host of new colleagues that I have personally helped trained and that has been a wonderful experience.
The future of my field is...
Fat grafting has become a really important part of our field to add volume naturally to patients’ faces, breasts, bottoms and more. That has been a big breakthrough. There are high-tech companies that are figuring out how to harvest fat from other people and probably be able to use other people’s fat to augment patients. I think that’s partly where plastic surgery is going. I think that nanotechnology will impact our field in the future. Where we can actually change the cellular behavior of our cells. Whether it be neurologically or our muscle cells, etc. So the use of stem cells will be a really big area of interest. Finally, on the technological side, we are getting a handle on how to tighten skin in a more effective way than we have in the past.
The biggest misconception about my field...
Most people when they think of plastic surgeons they think of facelifts, tummy tucks, breast augmentations, and Brazilian butt lifts but the reality is we train as long as neurosurgeons or cardiovascular surgeons. We were the first ones to do transplants. The first renal transplant was done by a plastic surgeon. So the misconception is that we are just cosmetic surgeons. At least half of us out there are working in academic centers and pediatric centers. We are doing cleft lip and palate, craniofacial surgery and breast reconstruction. The general public is unaware that when someone’s hand gets lopped off in a machine it’s a plastic surgery microsurgeon that’s called to help reattach it or help transfer tissue around the body.
My most requested procedures are…
By far my most requested procedures are breast augmentation, breast revision and symmastia repair. I have researched breast revision on the anatomy of the breast and the musculature associated with it, particularly with symmastia repair. I see a lot of patients who are referred to me from out of state or out of the country for symmastia repair or capsular contracture. I see breasts that have been operated on 4 or 5 times by other physicians that need to be revised and corrected.
What surgical advancements are you most excited about?
I think the surgical advancements that I am most excited about are minimally invasive surgeries and minimally invasive procedures. The technology that is coming down the pipe is amazing. I am most interested in stem cell technology and mind you, there are a lot of people out there who are saying they are doing stem cell therapy when they really are not. There is marketing misinformation out there. But I am interested in true stem cell therapy. I also think gene therapy is going to be the next frontier in the coming 10 to 20 years where we are able to insert various mechanism to correct genes within the body. But that enters all kinds of ethical and moral issues that are yet to be worked out.
What are you best known for?
Overall in my practice, I am best known for my breast work, my breast revision work, breast augmentations and my tummy tucks.
My most memorable patient reaction.
To be very frank, while my practice is now 100% aesthetic surgery there is something so memorable about my breast reconstruction patients. I use to do a lot of breast cancer surgery. We can make a breast, many times we did nipple-sparing mastectomy and reconstruction where the nipple is never removed, but sometimes the nipple would be removed. When you do a breast reconstruction and you are several months out, you reconstruct the nipple and tattoo it. It closes the door on that horrible portion of that woman’s life and opens another door to life again. I can tell you more than a few times I cried with my patients when I stood them up in front of a mirror and they looked at their breasts. They were back to normality and it’s a wonderful feeling.
What sets my practice apart is…
It’s our ‘people’ that separates us from many practices. The doctors that work here are good, honest people. They technically are very good and caring. When we’ve hired staff over the years, we have tried to hire people that were good people. Sometimes you walk into practices and you see a certain ‘type’ of staff member that you might expect to see in a plastic surgery office and there is a certain expectation. Most of my patients are moms from our communities who are raising a family and working. When they come in and meet our staff, they are going to meet someone who is very much like them. I don’t know how to explain it better than that. They are going to meet someone who they can identify with rather than someone they can’t.
What I love most about my profession is…
When I was in medical school and early in my general surgery residency we rotate through many specialties. And by in large you find yourself in a very monochrome existence. This is ‘such and such’ problem and this is how we fix it. What I love about plastic surgery is we have lots of different instruments and tools and we can apply them in any number of ways. We operate on nerves, blood vessels, muscles, fat, bone and skin. We operate on babies to geriatrics and males and females and different problems all over the body. So what I love about my field, even though I do 100% cosmetic work, is that as plastic surgeons through our career all of us wind up doing so many different things with so many different techniques. It’s always just a little bit different. Even with aesthetics. With a facelift, every face is not quite the same, there are asymmetries. So there is the artistic part of it and the technical part of it. So it keeps it fresh and interesting and challenging, rather than some areas of the surgical specialties where it is pretty much the same every single time – which I think is terribly boring, to be honest.
Career defining procedure…
I would have to say that my career-defining operation/technique/niche is symmastia. This is when the skin between the breasts lifts up after breast augmentation and it’s very difficult to repair successfully. We have done a lot of research and dissection with the residents to help define exactly what is going on and we have published several papers on it. Of course, that overlaps with a lot of different malposition of implants and repairs of breast augmentations that have gone awry.
What new services are you excited to offer?
The latest service we are offering is radio frequency micro needling. The new device we just added to our practice is called the Lumenis Legend Pro. I’ve started using it on my face, our aesthetician has treated me with it. It’s another modality for improving the youthful appearance of skin by causing tightening and new collagen development. So I am pretty excited about radio frequency micro needling as an adjunct to our practice.
