Dr. Joel Aronowitz — Dr. Aronowitz Featured on The Doctors Show
Welcome back to ARONOWITZLAND with Dr. Joel Aronowitz, Plastic & Reconstructive surgeon in Los Angeles. Dr. Aronowitz has been one of the most reputable plastic and reconstructive surgeons of Beverly Hills, California for the past 30 years. He is also the medical director of the Tower Wound Care Centers in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Culver City, Encino, Pasadena and Lynwood.
TV Host: “Today, we’re helping you decide which procedures are right for you, and while it may be nice to have the ability to undergo an elective surgery, others, well, we have to get whether we like it or not. Let’s look at Darla’s story.”
Darla: “About 15 years ago, I had a kidney transplant, and my nephrologist informed me that I would be more susceptible to cancer, particularly skin cancers, because of the immunosuppressive drugs that I take.”
Dr. Ellenhorn: “You have two lesions on your face right now that are possible early melanoma. We’ll do a wide excision of the suspicious lesions. Because these lesions are on your face, there’s always concern for scarring. So, after I perform the excisions, Dr. Aronowitz is going to be using a novel and new procedure to close the lesion.”
Darla: “He told me about a new procedure they have called stem cell transplants, where they take cells from another part of my body, harvest them outside my body, and then reinsert them in the areas where the skin cancers have been removed. Dr. Aronowitz says that the stem cells will help heal the area and minimize scarring.”
TV Host: “Let’s take a look at how Darla’s visit with Los Angeles plastic surgeon Dr. Joel Aronowitz went.”
Dr. Joel Aronowitz: “So we’re harvesting the fat using a standard liposuction technique that we’re going to obtain the stem cells from. We’ll give this fat to our technician. She’ll separate the stem cells from that fat. I’m going to put it in the centrifuge.
What will happen is it will separate completely, and we’re going to be left with our little amount of stem cells at the bottom. So now we have the stem cells in the syringe, and we’re going to go ahead and pass it off to the doctor to re-inject.
So, what I’ve outlined with the marker is the area that we’re going to be excising. And I’m going to just remove the area of the skin. Here’s the specimen that’s been removed.
We’ve removed the skin cancer, we’ve closed the superficial defect, and we’ve added our stem cells we harvested to the wound and the surrounding areas. So now the procedure is complete, and within six to eight weeks, the growth of the tissue that we added should be apparent.”
TV Host: “And I’m here with Darla and her plastic surgeon, Dr. Joel Aronowitz, from University Stem Cell Center right here in Santa Monica. Thank you both for being here. How are you? Welcome back, Joel. Thank you. Good to see you. So how are you feeling?”
Darla: “I’m feeling great. I’m so pleased with the way this is healed, and it’s magically almost gone.”
TV Host: “Well, let’s take a look. We’re going to show that before picture, and I’m going to let you, Dr. Aronowitz, take us through this once again, what you did in surgery.”
Dr. Joel Aronowitz: “Well, what we did was Dr. Ellenhorn excised the skin cancer, which was a fairly large defect when it’s all said and done, and we made sure that we had negative margins. In other words, there’s no skin cancer at the edge. And then the defect was closed. Meanwhile, I harvested some fat from Darla, which is one of the bonuses of the operation. Everybody likes to lose a little fat. Darla doesn’t have much extra, obviously. And then separated the stem cells from the fat. Then the stem cells are added back to a small amount of the fat that’s injected into the defect, both to fill the contour depression, the defect there, as well as to enhance the healing.”
TV Host: “What do you do specifically to separate the stem cells from the fat?”
Dr. Joel Aronowitz: “So the stem cells exist throughout our body, but in our fat tissue, we have a lot of stem cells. These are all adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells, of course. What we do is we need to disperse those cells apart, not just spin it down in a centrifuge. We’re actually, you could see my technician there, she separated the cells using a special process. This can be done right in the operating room now. It takes about an hour, hour and a half. Then we have a small quantity that actually represents millions and millions of these tiny stem cells. These are the youthful regenerative cells in our body. We add those to the area where we need that regeneration. We sometimes mix that with a small amount of fat, just like the fat injections that you’re doing, to create a better contour, but also add those additional enhancing stem cells to aid in the regeneration and healing process.”
TV Host: “And you brought some other before and after photos of other patients that you’ve…”
Dr. Joel Aronowitz: “Yeah, I have a good example to show you of a skin cancer patient. A lot of skin cancer patients, the skin cancer is excised and the doctor just lets the wound heal. This is a very traditional, accepted way to treat a skin cancer. This woman, Gail, had a very large defect on her cheek, you can see. At a week after her closure and stem cell injection, she’s shown in the middle, she’s still a little bruised. And at six months later now, you can see that the contour defect is filled in, and even the scar, although she has a scar, if you look carefully, the scar appearance and the softness of the skin is remarkably improved.”
TV Host: “That’s an impressive result. Thank you very much, Dr. Aronowitz and Darla. You look great. Coming up, we are revealing the very latest non-invasive facial treatment to rejuvenate your skin, make your wrinkles virtually disappear, so you better stay tuned.”
Originally published at https://drjoelaronowitzmd.blogspot.com on April 15, 2024.
