Being a young doctor may seem daunting enough, but for plastic surgeon Dr. Rania El Hativ, couple that with also being the first female in your field out of a population of more than 7.5 million.
29 year old, Dr. El Hativ is the first female Israeli plastic surgeon, according to Jewish Journal, a distinction she finds both encouraging and a responsibility. With that comes carrying the weight of speaking for her patients and showing that plastic surgery stretches far beyond cosmetic procedures, El Hativ said.
El Hativ says the challenge of repairing traumas like burns, tumors and cleft palates, among others, is inspiring to her. As an artist, El Hativ says she is able to combine the medical with the aesthetic to help her reconstructive patients.
One such patient was a child who was born with a cleft palate. Three months after El Hativ performed the surgery, the child returned for a check up and El Hativ said there was no evidence of the cleft palate.
“I suddenly understood what I had done for her and how her life was transformed by this surgery,” El Hativ said.
For now, as El Hativ focuses her attention on helping reconstructive patients regain something they once thought was lost, she also works to educate her community about plastic surgery.
“They don’t know that there are so many other things we can do to help change people’s lives,” El Hativ said.
Among the reconstructive surgeries performed by plastic surgeons are also breast reconstruction after a mastectomy and tissue expansion, which works to create excess tissue as part of a procedure.