Warning: Some of the embedded images below contain pictures of surgical procedures and could be considered graphic
A North Bethesda doctor played a role earlier this week in one of the largest skin removal surgeries in history.
The surgery was live-tweeted by a New York Times reporter.
In one of the photos posted by Sarah Lyall, plastic surgeon Joseph Michaels is seen wearing surgical scrubs and eyeing the next incision as part of a process that would remove nearly 50 pounds of skin from a man who at one time weighed 980 pounds.
“It was the most extreme case of weight loss that any of the surgeons involved in this case have seen,” Michaels said Thursday.
Patient Paul Mason, 54, who currently lives in Orange, Massachusetts, had arrived in the New York City operating room Tuesday weighing about 350 pounds. Since 2010 he lost nearly 650 pounds after undergoing gastric bypass surgery. The weight loss left him at a healthier weight, but with excess skin that caused rashes and multiple infections.
“Extra skin can be really debilitating,” Michaels, who has a practice surgery office on Old Georgetown Road in North Bethesda, said. “It makes it hard to maintain weight loss.”
For years the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, where Mason previously lived, declined to pay for the surgery he needed to remove the skin. And Mason couldn’t afford to pay for it himself.
But after a New York Times article written by Lyall about Mason’s plight was published in 2013, a New York plastic surgeon, Jennifer Capla, reached out to him to help and offered her services free of charge.
However, Capla couldn’t perform the necessary surgery herself—it required a team of surgeons—so she reached out to Michaels and a Pittsburgh plastic surgeon, Dr. J. Peter Rubin, to assist. Michaels said it was a “no-brainer” for him to participate.
Tuesday’s surgery took about nine hours and removed a total of 48 pounds of skin, which measured about 6 feet in length, from Mason’s legs, arms and stomach, according to Michaels.
“The biggest challenge that we had were the blood vessels,” Michaels said. He explained that the vessels had grown over time to support the fat and skin of a 980-pound man. “We had to be meticulous to care for those blood vessels to avoid blood loss.”
Throughout the surgery, the doctors had to cut their way through the excess skin, suture blood vessels and then stitch together the incisions.
Michaels said the process went smoothly. Mason will be “in the hospital for several days—that’s not atypical—and once he stabilizes he’ll stay locally in New York City and follow up with Dr. Capla in her office.”
Over time Mason should be able to regain a semblance of normal life, Michaels says. That’s good news for Mason, who recently became engaged to a Massachusetts woman, Rebecca Mountain. The two met after Mountain read about Mason’s story and connected with him online. She later proposed to him on the ABC TV show The View.
“These surgeries are really life-changing,” said Michaels, who specializes in post-weight loss surgery. “It’s great to see these patients start a new chapter in their life—go to places they weren’t able to before, walk distances they couldn’t before and wear clothes they weren’t able to before.”
Paul Mason before the surgery (left) and Paul Mason with Mountain (right) via Mason's youcaring fundraising website. Credit: Paul Nixon Photography
The surgeons get to work on the next area, Paul mason's right leg. pic.twitter.com/Wi1b5yqIXK
— Sarah Lyall (@sarahlyall) April 28, 2015
24 pounds of loose skin pic.twitter.com/QNkdwR7sNt
— Sarah Lyall (@sarahlyall) April 28, 2015
