Patients undergoing a cosmetic procedure should choose a member of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) in order to be sure that their doctor has extensive plastic surgical experience and has met ASAPS requirements for continuing cosmetic surgery education.

Hospital privileges: Cosmetic plastic surgery is typically performed outside the hospital in an office-based surgical facility. No matter where the surgery is to be performed, chosen surgeons should have hospital privileges to perform the specific type of procedure in an acute care hospital.

Facilities: Scientific data reveal that accredited office-based facilities have a safety record similar to that of hospital ambulatory surgery settings. Ambulatory or office-based facilities should be accredited by a nationally or state-recognized accrediting agency, or be at least state licensed or Medicare certified.

Health: People who want to have a cosmetic surgery procedure should be in generally good physical condition and must be frank with their physician about any kind of drugs they are currently taking.

The medical history should involve hormones (oral contraceptives and estrogen replacement) and even such medications as aspirin, vitamins, and herbal medications because these substances can interfere with blood clotting or interact with medications that are used during surgery and could cause the surgical risk to increase.

Patient education: Before surgery, patients should be properly informed about all elements of the planned surgery, including whether to stop taking certain medications and quit smoking.

Although there are always exceptions, typically a man’s body will have more muscle and less fat than a woman’s. Because muscle tissue contains more water than fat tissue, a man’s body contains a higher percentage of water than a woman’s, approximately 60% in comparison to 50%. Alcohol is dissolved in water but not in fat, therefore as the ethanol is moved from the stomach into the blood, it will be distributed in a higher number of a man’s cells than a woman’s. As a result, the concentration of ethanol is higher in a woman’s bloodstream; she will have a higher Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) with the same amount of alcohol intake. Higher BAC results in more ethanol going to the organs, where its intoxicating effects are exerted.

But what if the woman is more muscular than the man, and they weigh more or less the same? She may additionally be hindered by her speed of beer breakdown. Although the majority of ethanol is oxidized in the liver, a small amount is metabolized in the stomach, by an enzyme called gastric alcohol dehydrogenase. Several small studies have proven that in younger women, the activity of this enzyme is drastically lower compared with their male counterparts. Therefore, men are able to break down more ethanol in the stomach, so less is absorbed into the bloodstream.

What women do have working to their advantage, however, is a higher rate of alcohol excretion, though this is based on their lean body mass. Men and women eliminate approximately the same amount of alcohol per unit of weight, but women eliminate more ethanol per unit of lean body mass per hour than men do.

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