Richard V. Dowden, M.D., C.M., F.A.C.S.

Certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery

Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery, Inc.
6770 Mayfield Road, Suite 410
(Mayfield Heights),
Cleveland, Ohio 44124
(440) 449-7470

Contents:

The Plastic Surgery procedures currently being performed by Dr. Dowden include the following:

Plastic surgery of the Face:

Plastic surgery of the Breasts:

Plastic surgery for Body Contouring:

If you are interested in any of the procedures described on these pages and want to find a board-certified Plastic Surgeon in your area who is qualified to do them, call the referral service of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons at (800)-635-0635, or check http://www.plasticsurgery.org. As further discussed below, if you already have the name of a doctor, you can verify Board Certification at http://www.abms.org, where every board-certified doctor in the US is listed.

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Dr. Dowden does not do the following plastic surgery procedures:

Plastic surgeons who do these procedures can be found through the referral service of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons at (800)-635-0635, or check with: http://www.plasticsurgery.org.

The best way to determine whether a doctor you have in mind is actually a Plastic Surgeon certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, is to log onto the Board Certification Verification website http://www.abms.org, type in the first and last name of the surgeon you are checking, and then click the Submit button. If the name is returned with the statement: "Certified By: The American Board of Plastic Surgery" then he/she is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. If that exact wording does not appear, then he/she is NOT board-certified in Plastic Surgery. If instead this statement appears: "We are sorry, but there are no entries which match your search criteria, please try one or more of the following" and you are certain that you have input all the information correctly, then that person is not certified by any legitimate board whatsoever.

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General information about Dr. Dowden:

Hospital and Surgery Center Affiliations:

Case Western-Reserve University (Assistant Clinical Professor)
Hillcrest Hospital (Cleveland Clinic)
Marymount Surgery Center (Cleveland Clinic)
The Surgery Center
University Hospital
Zeeba Surgery Center

(The above are listed in alphabetical order,
and no ranking of the facilities is implied.)

Specialty / Board Certifications:

American Board of General Surgery
American Board of Plastic Surgery

Organization Memberships:

FACS = Fellow of the American College of Surgeons
ASPS = American Society of Plastic Surgeons
ASAPS = American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
AAPS = American Association of Plastic Surgeons
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
Academy of Medicine of Cleveland
Northern Ohio Medical Association

Education:

Bachelor of Science, McGill University, 1964
Doctor of Medicine, McGill Medical School, 1968

Residency:

General Surgery Part 1, 1972-1974 - Tufts University, Boston (Chair: Dr Harry Soroff)
General Surgery Part 2, 1974-1976 - S.U.N.Y. Stonybrook, New York (Chair: Dr Harry Soroff)
Plastic Surgery, 1976 - 1979 - East Virginia Medical School, Virginia (Chair: Dr Charles Horton)

Other Titles Held:

Medical Advisor for the State of Ohio,
Breast Reconstruction Unit
of the American Cancer Society
Former Head of the Section of Breast Surgery,
Plastic Surgery Department
of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Insurance considerations:

Dr. Dowden treats patients with all types of insurance, from all commercial insurance companies. However, Dr. Dowden is not in any way connected with any insurance company, and not involved with any HMO, PPO, PMO etc. which means that any insurance company will consider care by Dr Dowden as being "out of network." It is the patient's responsibility to contact their insurance carrier to clarify the out-of-network benefits and to determine if a referral is needed. No claims for cosmetic surgery can ever be submitted to insurance carriers.
Dr. Dowden is also not connected in any way with any government health-financing networks, including Medicare, Medicaid and the military. Dr. Dowden has many patients who are on Medicare, but they are solely responsible for their own expenses. It is important that patients understand that such government health-financing networks cannot be billed for any procedure, visit or service performed by Dr. Dowden, regardless of whether it is cosmetic surgery or not.

Areas of Interest:

Cosmetic Surgery of the face, particularly endoscopic and laser procedures
Cosmetic and Reconstructive Breast Surgery, including endoscopic "scarless" procedures
Body Sculpting, body contouring, and Liposuction, including Tumescent and Ultrasonic

Other Activities:

Leader of yearly charity surgery expedition for deformed children in South America
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Details about Dr. Dowden:

Dr. Dowden graduated from McGill University in 1964 and from McGill Medical School in 1968. Dr. Dowden completed his General Surgery Residency in 1976 at S.U.N.Y. Stonybrook, New York and his Plastic Surgery Residency in 1979 at East Virginia Medical School, Virginia. He was at the Cleveland Clinic from 1979-1992 where he held the position of the Head of the Breast Surgery Section in the Plastic Surgery Department, and he then opened his own private practice in Cleveland.

Dr. Dowden has taken great interest in teaching others. From 1975 to present he has been guest lecturer at 146 meetings in sixteen states and eight countries, has written six book chapters, has published over 70 medical articles for medical journals and various womens' magazines, and has been interviewed on several radio and TV programs in the United States, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, and several European countries.

He and his colleague Dr. Shirley Anain (now in Buffalo, NY) developed the technique to quickly and accurately determine whether a silicone gel breast implant has been ruptured or is leaking, called implant endoscopy. Dr. Dowden is one of a few Plastic Surgeons in the United States trained to perform breast augmentation through the navel, also called the Transumbilical Breast Augmentation, ("TUBA") which he has been doing since 1992.

Dr. Dowden was Assistant Clinical Professor (emeritus) at Case Western Reserve University, and the Medical Advisor for the American Cancer Society Breast Reconstruction Unit for the State of Ohio. In addition to cosmetic surgery, he is very active in reconstructive surgery, particularly correcting deformities that result from cancer removal or birth defects. He has been active in medical missionary work since 1970, leading a surgical team to perform charity surgery for children with birth defects in developing nations. His scientific society memberships include the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, American Association of Plastic Surgeons, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Doctor Dowden is fully certified by the only legitimate plastic surgery board: the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Plastic Surgery Board Certification can be verified at: The American Board of Medical Specialties.

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Photo (1996):

rvdcolsm.jpg - 19497 Bytes

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About Plastic Surgery:

Plastic Surgery is the branch of surgery concerned with the improvement, repair, or restoration of parts of the body that have been changed by aging, surgery, deficient growth, or injury. There are two broad classifications used for categorizing plastic surgery: cosmetic surgery and reconstructive surgery. Medically speaking the distinction between these is somewhat blurry, because a plastic surgeon uses many of the principles of cosmetic surgery to try to get a good appearance when doing reconstructive surgery, and also uses the principles of reconstructive techniques when doing cosmetic surgery. Nevertheless, because health insurance companies needed a way to determine whether they should be paying for an operation or not, the Plastic Surgery Society and the American Medical Association have come up with the following definitions:

-Cosmetic Surgery is that done to alter appearance of surface features which are within the range of normal for a person's age and ethnic background. Examples would include facelift, breast augmentation, breast lift, liposuction, tummytuck.

-Reconstructive surgery is that done to correct a deformity or abnormality from a birth defect, trauma, tumor treatment, etc, even though there may be improvement in the appearance as well. Examples would include breast reduction, breast reconstruction, otoplasty, and facial or nose reconstruction after injury.

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Why are these pages so plain??

The philosophy of these pages is to provide information in a form that is readily accessible to the maximum number of users, regardless of the type of computer or browser they are using. This includes rapid page-loading to maximize information transfer rate, and compatibility with even the older text-only browsers.

To this end, every attempt has been made to keep the informative textual pages of this site free of frames, flashing text, advertisements, animation, banners, cute icons, moving GIFs, large maps, cookies, javascript, unrequested pop-ups, pop-unders, consoles, Flash, sound, movies, trailing cursors, ActiveX, MP3, Java applets, banners, advertising, and sticky pages. From these pages there are no intrusions to your computer such as cookies, spy-ware, ad-ware, trojans, spy-bots, loggers etc. You should not need any unusual plug-ins or players to get all the written information.

The only exception to the above is the hundreds of photographs of patients posted for viewing on this site. To prevent repeat episodes of image theft such as have occurred in the past, viewing those images will require browsers with Java capability. This security measure is done with the full understanding that some users may not be able to view those particular images, and with apologies to those users for that necessity. The textual information on these pages is still readily accessible without Java.

Every attempt has been made to verify that all the links are working; if you find a broken link and care to bring it to our attention, please call, or write to the address below.
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Office information:

Office hours and appointments

Our offices (in Cleveland, Ohio) are open for telephone calls between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm E.S.T. Monday through Friday. Consultations are by appointment only. The consultation should be well in advance of the date you would like to have the operation performed.

Main Office and Mailing Address

6770 Mayfield Road, Suite 410
(Mayfield Heights) Cleveland, Ohio 44124

Tel:(440) 449-7470

Map and directions to Dr. Dowden's offices


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This page Copyright © R.V. Dowden, MD, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007.

Information and images on this and related pages may not be reproduced or distributed electronically or in print without permission from Dr. Dowden.

Note that while the information given personally by Dr. Dowden during a consultation is completely current and up-to-date, the information on this website is only as current as the date of last update, and therefore may become out-of-date.

6770 Mayfield Road, Suite 410
(Mayfield Heights) Cleveland, Ohio 44124
(440) 449-7470

Note: To ensure maximum privacy for our patients, all of our out-going phone lines have caller ID blocking; if your phone does not accept ID-blocked calls you will not be able to receive any calls back from our office.

Last Update: 3:41 PM on 09/09/2007

URL of this home page: http://dr-dowden.com/index.html