Aspiration is the driving force behind Miami’s cosmetic surgery industry. The testimonials are pinned to clinic websites, the before-and-afters go viral on Instagram, and the real story often gets lost in between the glossy marketing and the actual operating table. With board-certified surgeons, trilingual care, a spotless lobby, and a social media feed full of patient transformations, Smart Plastic Surgery Miami has established a noticeable presence in that world. It reads well on paper. Something much more complex is revealed in the reviews that patients have been posting on Yelp, Reddit, RealSelf, and the Better Business Bureau.
When everything goes well, the surgical outcomes actually seem to go well. Lipo 360 and BBL procedures are clean, well-organized, and worth the trip, according to patients who had positive experiences. According to a few Yelp reviews, the facility is remarkably well-organized, aesthetically pleasing, and staffed with welcoming faces at intake. A waiting list is filled by reviews like the one from a woman who said her lipo experience was flawless from beginning to end. For a portion of Smart’s clientele, the clinic might provide exactly what it promises. However, that group doesn’t seem to be the majority, at least not among those who are driven enough to write in public.
It’s difficult to write off the more in-depth accounts—thousands of words on Reddit and RealSelf—as random bad luck. A patient from the Midwest who had lipo 360, arm lipo, axilla work, and a breast lift performed by Dr. Jeff spent more than a year trying to get a revision for clearly flawed arm results, which a massage therapist noticed three months after the procedure. She took a plane back to Miami, waited for two hours in a room where the staff seemed to have forgotten she was there, had a quick meeting with the doctor, who acknowledged that the arms appeared to be in poor condition, and then spent months pursuing an email that never arrived. Calls were routed to post-op lines, where they continued to ring until they were disconnected. Ignored texts. The clinic’s email address eventually stopped functioning completely. Her story received 108 upvotes and numerous comments from people who said they had experienced the same thing.
The disappearing act following surgery is the part that keeps coming up. A patient who underwent a tummy tuck and rhinoplasty with Dr. Pitman recounted a pre-operative visit in which the physician appeared to be in a hurry, a post-operative procedure in which the nurse failed to remove nasal packing appropriately, and a recovery so disorganized that she ended up in a hospital in Charleston, West Virginia, having two liters of blood drained from her abdomen. Her hemoglobin level had fallen to six. She required a transfusion of blood. She called the clinic’s emergency number during the crisis, but it went to voicemail, and she never heard back. It’s difficult to read that story without feeling a little uneasy.
The breakdown appears to be influenced by the clinic’s internal structure. Many patients report that they were abruptly moved between coordinators, that different staff members gave them different answers on the same day, and that they were never able to talk to the same person twice while they were recovering. One patient reported that she called so many numbers in an attempt to get a consistent response regarding her drains that she finally gave up and went to urgent care. Patients seem to be slipping through the cracks between the intake and post-operative processes, which seem to be operating on completely different tracks.
The employee’s perspective is consistent. Employees who discussed the clinic’s internal culture describe a setting that prioritizes booking volume over patient outcomes. A throughput model that might not allow for the kind of meticulous follow-up that cosmetic surgery, with its lengthy and occasionally complex recovery arcs, actually requires is suggested by remarks regarding the number of surgeries scheduled each day—far more than the clinic apparently tells patients. Patients undergoing BBL and stomach tucks require weeks of careful post-operative care; this is where Smart most frequently fails.
For certain patients, surgeons, and procedures, there is a version of this clinic that is obviously effective. There are both supporters and critics of Dr. Shanklin. There is some truth to the Instagram feed. However, the volume and specificity of the serious complaints—especially those involving hospitalization and unanswered emergency calls—indicate something that potential patients should carefully consider before making a reservation. There are plenty of board-certified plastic surgeons in Miami, and the RealSelf community has been recommending a number of them. Whether a clinic’s post-operative phone line and its social media presence are telling the same story is a worthwhile question. They frequently aren’t at Smart Plastic Surgery Miami.
