Suite 104 at 2360 County Road 94 in Pearland holds both ends of a mommy makeover. Patients sit for their consultation there, and the practice’s accredited operating room and recovery room are on the same site, with recovery located right outside the surgery doors.
The address belongs to Leo Lapuerta, MD, Plastic Surgery and its on-site facility, the Plastic Surgery Institute of Southeast Texas, which Dr. Leo Lapuerta established in 2003. For Pearland mothers weighing the procedure, the practice’s page on mommy makeovers in Pearland is a starting point, and the office itself is where the plan takes shape.
A surgical facility in the same building
The Pearland facility carries AAAASF accreditation and handles outpatient surgery. Dr. Lapuerta owns and operates it, and he works with physician anesthesiologists rather than nurse anesthetists or anesthesia assistants.
That arrangement suits a mommy makeover, which the practice performs under general anesthesia in an accredited facility. Surgery time varies between four and ten hours depending on the combination of procedures, and a typical case runs about seven. Most patients go home the same day. The practice advises those with complex medical problems, or those having a significant amount of liposuction, to have surgery in a hospital with an overnight stay.
Inside a Pearland consultation
At the Pearland office, the practice describes a reception room in calm colors and a private consultation and exam room where patients meet one on one with Dr. Lapuerta. It says the staff works to keep appointments on schedule. Patients can review before-and-after photographs, watch informational videos and handle silicone and saline breast implant samples under his supervision.
Those samples matter for a mommy makeover, since breast surgery is one of its two main parts. Options include a lift, an augmentation, the two combined, or a reduction. On the abdomen, the usual tools are a tummy tuck, which removes loose skin and tightens the muscles, and liposuction for fat that resists diet and exercise. The practice says Dr. Lapuerta often adds liposuction of the flanks to shape the waist.
The consultation also covers fit. The practice looks for women who have completed their families, who are in good health at a stable weight, and who do not smoke or will stop at least six weeks before surgery. A woman who has given birth waits at least six months after delivery, or six months after she finishes breastfeeding.
The surgeon behind the address
Dr. Lapuerta is triple board certified, by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, the American Board of Surgery and in Surgery of the Hand. He has more than 30 years of experience and more than 30,000 surgical and non-surgical procedures, and he has more than 3,000 before-and-after images available for patients to review. In his view, a surgeon’s experience with a procedure, counted in cases and in years, together with board certification, is the best predictor of an outcome patients are happy with. He is Chairman of Plastic Surgery at St. Joseph Hospital in Houston and a teaching surgeon serving programs at UT-Houston, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and Houston Methodist Hospital.
Raised in San Antonio by a family that immigrated from Valencia, Spain, he is a native Spanish speaker, and the practice has bilingual support staff. His recognitions include Living Magazine Best Plastic Surgeon and Best Place for Botox, awarded in multiple years in the magazine’s Houston and Pearland/Friendswood editions.
He followed his father, a pulmonologist in San Antonio, into medicine. His own description of the specialty he chose is short: “Plastic surgery allows you to reform the physical body in a way that restores a patient’s soul.”
After surgery day
The practice says most women return to work within two to three weeks, depending on the job, and that full recovery takes about six weeks in a typical case. Patients wear compression garments, limit lifting and strenuous exercise, and avoid sleeping on their stomachs for the first few weeks. Final results tend to show within eight to 12 weeks as swelling resolves.
Complications can follow any operation, and the follow-up visits exist to check that incisions heal and swelling subsides as expected. For a Pearland patient, the consultation room, the operating room and the recovery room share one County Road 94 address, and the team walks each patient through post-op and follow-up care instructions before she heads home.
This article is for general information only and is not medical advice. Results vary from patient to patient. Consult a board-certified plastic surgeon or your physician about your own situation. Written in partnership with Joseph Lambert, a publicist working with Leo Lapuerta, MD Plastic Surgery.
