From cosmetic face lifts
in Metropolitan Kansas City to severe cleft lips and palates in Latin America
– Tom Geraghty, M.D., spend his professional life at drastically different ends
of the medical spectrum.
During most of the year,
Dr. Geraghty has a busy plastic surgery practice with offices in North Kansas
City and on the Plaza. He specializes in elective aesthetic and reconstructive
surgery and served as the president of the Plastic Surgery Society in Kansas
City in 1991 – 1993.
However, for three weeks
every year, he leads a team of 60 physicians and nurses who travel to the Dominican
Republic with Medical Aid for Children of Latin America (MACLA).
The medical team works non-stop
to repair cleft lips and apaltes, burn scar contractures and correct other reconstuctive
deformities. These patients have little access to modern health care and are
the poorest of that country.
“One
of the joys of going to the third world is that it is pure medicine. We work
from morning until night doing 250 surgeries in three weeks. The people say
thank you and perhaps pay you with a chicken or some eggs and they get well,”
Dr. Geraghty said.
“I have a very enjoyable
practice here in Kansas City with happy, satisfied patients, but when you go
to Latin America there’s no managed care – no paper work, no interferences.
I find great satisfaction in that typeof experience.”
A Changed Practice
Dr. Geraghty began his private
practice in 1978 after graduating from K.U. Medical School and completing residencies
in general surgery at St. Luke’s and in plastic surgery at Children’s Mercy
Hospital and Truman Medical Center. In the past 20 years, he’s seen his practice
chagne dramatically.
When he began practice,
a large percentage of his work was reconstructive plastic surgery: reduction
mammoplasty, skin caner removal, nasal reconstruction, vascular skin lesions
and post-cancer breast reconstruction.
While thes procedures still
constitute a small percent of his practice, aesthetic surgery is his primary
specialty. This includes breast augmentations and lifts, endoscopic forehead
lifts facelifts, laser surgery and skin resurfacing and liposuction, abdominoplasty
and blepharoplasty.
“Over the years, I
have changed my practice – primary due to deplorable managed care. I now do
80 percent cosmetic, aesthetic surgery,” he said.