When deciding to have elective Plastic Surgery it is not that uncommon that a patient presents with a request to address more than one concern at a time. While it is not wrong to combine procedures into one operative session, it of course needs to make sense and, above all, not compromise safety. I have often performed more than one procedure at a time for a patient because of the ability to heal from multiple procedures simultaneously.
By having more than one procedure at a time, a patient has less overall downtime from exercise and work. The latter ultimately leads to financial savings. Additional, money can often be saved because there are usually less costs for the anesthesia and facility charges. The reason for this is that there is usually more up front expense for starting a procedure than the hours afterward.
A patient must realize though that to some degree there is slightly more risk when extending the length of an operation versus doing smaller procedures separately. Combining procedures should be discussed with your Plastic surgeon because you want them to make sense as a total operation and you want your surgeon to be comfortable with that kind of decision as well.
Generally, I do not like the total operative time to be much longer than 5 hours. Life threatening risks start to rise exponentially. There are certain procedures that I believe should not be done together, like a large breast reduction and abdominoplasty because of blood flow issues. One procedure can affect the blood supply to the area of the other leading to healing problems and potential skin loss. It is very common for groupings of facial rejuvenation procedures to be performed at once and this almost always makes sense.
