Dr. Michael Omidi is a double board-certified facial and body plastic surgeon who has practiced in Beverly Hills since 2005. He is known for his work in rhinoplasty, including complex revision cases, and for developing techniques such as the Mannequin Breast Lift™ and Designed Rhinoplasty. In this Q&A, he talks about how he defines success, both in surgery and beyond it.
How do you personally define success?
For me, success comes down to exceptional patient care. That sounds simple, but it is the whole job. A rhinoplasty can be technically perfect and still fail the patient if I did not listen closely enough beforehand to understand what they actually wanted. Success is the alignment between what I planned and how the patient feels six months later. If those two things match, I have done my job.
You specialize in some of the hardest revision rhinoplasty cases. What does success look like there?
Revision cases are a different kind of success because the bar is not “make it beautiful.” The bar is “make it work, and make it look natural given what is already there.” A secondary or tertiary rhinoplasty patient has usually been through disappointment already. Success in those cases is restoring function and facial balance without overpromising. I would rather under-promise and deliver a nose that breathes well and looks right than chase a dramatic before-and-after.
You developed the Mannequin Breast Lift and Designed Rhinoplasty. What does success mean when you are building something new, rather than performing a known procedure?
With a new technique, success is durability, not just the first result. The Mannequin Breast Lift creates an internal support structure, almost like an internal bra, inside the breast. The early result always looks good after any lift. The real test is whether that lift and that fullness hold up years later. I built that technique because I wanted a way to measure success at year three, not just week three. Designed Rhinoplasty came from the same instinct: measuring the nose before and during surgery so the outcome is something I verified, not something I hoped for.
How do you measure success across your career rather than in a single case?
Referrals. A large share of my new patients come from former patients or from other physicians. That tells me something a single great result cannot. It means the outcome held up long enough, and the experience was good enough, that someone was willing to put their name behind it to a friend or a colleague. I take that more seriously than any single procedure going well.
Has your definition of success changed over the years?
Early on, I think I measured success mostly in the operating room. Did the technique go the way I planned? Now I measure it more by what happens after the patient leaves. Recovery, how they feel in their body a year out, whether the results aged the way I expected. That shift happened gradually, through years of doing thousands of procedures and following up on them.
Does success mean the same thing on your medical mission work as it does in your Beverly Hills practice?
No, and that is part of what makes the mission work valuable to me. On missions to Vietnam, Colombia, and the Philippines, I am often treating congenital deformities, severe burns, or head and neck cancers where the alternative to surgery is no treatment at all. Success there is more basic: did this person get access to a surgery they otherwise never would have had. It is a good reminder that success is relative to what was possible before you showed up.
What is one measure of success you do not think patients consider, but you do?
Whether I would have taken the case myself, as a surgeon evaluating another surgeon’s plan. I only perform procedures I have done enough times to consistently get right. If I would trust my own plan on a patient I cared about personally, that is success before the surgery has even started.