Jason Bloom, MD - Facial Plastic Surgeon in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

Eva Sheie (00:03):
The purpose of this podcast is simple. We want you to get to know your doctor before meeting them in person because you're making a life-changing decision, and time is scarce. The more you can learn about who your doctor is before you meet them, the better that first meeting will be. There is no substitute for an in-person appointment, but we hope this comes close. I'm your host, Eva Sheie, and you're listening to Meet the Doctor. Welcome back to Meet the Doctor. My guest today is Jason Bloom and we're live in Austin at The Aesthetic Meet. Good to have you on the show.

Dr. Bloom (00:36):
Well, thanks so much for having me. Austin has been great so far. Excited to be here.

Eva Sheie (00:42):
The weather's been really good too. There's years in March where it's like winter out there and all the people from the East coast go, what am I doing here?

Dr. Bloom (00:50):
Well, it certainly was nice. I'm only here for a short time and I'm running around, so I don't even get to enjoy the outside so much. I'm doing so many things here, but hopefully get out and have some nice dinners, maybe some barbecue.

Eva Sheie (01:04):
Oh yeah, let me know if you need recommendations on the meat. Okay. You're running around because you're doing a lot of teaching today. What are you up to?

Dr. Bloom (01:14):
Yeah, so there was some cadaver labs that were yesterday, kind of like some pre-meeting things. And then today I'm moderating the injectable session. That's going to be great, live injections with some ultrasound and I'm moderating and some great anatomy. And then I'm the moderator for the hair restoration, surgical and nonsurgical panel, as well as the moderator for the weight loss revolution panel. So a lot of things.

Eva Sheie (01:43):
Wow. Is that all today or today and tomorrow?

Dr. Bloom (01:46):
It is all packed into today.

Eva Sheie (01:48):
How did you end up in this seat of teaching so many different things?

Dr. Bloom (01:54):
Interestingly, this is as a facial plastic surgeon, this is typically not a meeting that we come to because in order to be a member of the Aesthetic Society, you have to be a board certified plastic surgeon. And interestingly, years ago, I meet every single aspect of the credentialing to do that, but the society had always had that one barrier. And I am the A-A-F-P-R-S, so American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Liaison to the Aesthetic Society. So on calls with the President Kia and the board this year, you heard it here first in 2025, there are going to be membership available to the core societies that do aesthetics. So facial plastic surgery, plastic surgery, oculoplastic surgery and dermatology, and they're opening it up. So this is kind of like the olive branch. They asked me to come, speak, be involved with a meeting, and I'm like, I came in head first.

Eva Sheie (03:05):
That's significant progress.

Dr. Bloom (03:08):
We're excited. It's been a long time and I do a hundred percent aesthetic surgery in my practice, just face, and it's nice to be a member of the society where really focusing on aesthetic surgery.

Eva Sheie (03:25):
So your practice is in Pennsylvania, correct?

Dr. Bloom (03:28):
Yeah. My practice is in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, which is right outside of the downtown Philly area. It's about 25 minutes outside of downtown Philly. And I am very academically involved. I'm the co-director of the Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania where I hold an appointment there. And I also have appointments in dermatology at Temple University where I teach and work with the residents and Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine where I work with the residents. So I have a few different appointments within various universities, and I work with the residents and the fellows, and that's what keeps me young.

Eva Sheie (04:12):
So you're not just busy at the meeting, you're also busy at home.

Dr. Bloom (04:17):
Yes. Yeah, I have just a busy practice. We just got through opening a 4,000 square foot surgical center with two operating rooms where we do a hundred percent of our cases now. So that was another project that has been definitely a learning process and operating now has been an absolute pleasure. It's a joy to have your nursing staff, your scrub techs, everyone is on the exact same page.

Eva Sheie (04:51):
I assume people come to you from all over the world.

Dr. Bloom (04:54):
Yeah, I mean, I would say most of my marketing efforts and my patients come from within the greater Pennsylvania, Philadelphia area. So that's like South Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware. I get a lot of patients from that area. But I do have a pretty active social media and I've had patients fly in from everywhere, from Hawaii, Singapore, Europe. But to be honest, I prefer, I'm very hands-on with my patients with their recovery, with making sure every step from the surgery, from the pre-op to the surgery to the recovery and post-op is taken care of. So if it was up to me, I much prefer taking care of a local patient that I can see more regularly than taking care of a patient from elsewhere. Interestingly, yesterday, I operated on a patient from Austin about six or eight weeks ago, and I met her for some coffee yesterday just to do a post-op check and check in on her results. I did her lower eyelids and fat grafting as well as her rhinoplasty. So

Eva Sheie (06:06):
That's full service.

Dr. Bloom (06:07):
Yeah, you got to be, I'm like, Hey, that's interesting. You live in Austin and I'm going to be there in about two months, so maybe we'll do a post-op check then.

Eva Sheie (06:17):
Oh, that's amazing. You made time for a patient while you're here.

Dr. Bloom (06:20):
It's important.

Eva Sheie (06:21):
That says a lot about you. For a particular type of procedure or a technique or something, is there something that people refer you for to each other?

Dr. Bloom (06:33):
Yeah, I mean, interestingly, I've seen this change over the last, certainly over the last, I would say 10 years of my career. And I've been in practice for 15 years now. When I started my career, I was like the nose guy. I was doing lots of endonasal rhinoplasty and I still do. But interestingly, once you reach about 10 years in practice and are seasoned, people begin to trust you more for other things. And so now I do a significant amount of aging face surgery, that's eyelids and face neck lifts. And interestingly, I think that my practice changed about five years ago for the better. I hired a partner, she is an amazing rhinoplasty surgeon. She got really busy as getting my overflow cases or I was too expensive or people just wanted to get in for surgery and they couldn't. So that's how she started. Now people are coming to her primarily, and whereas I used to do about 200 rhinoplasties a year, now I do about a hundred. And then my aging face and my blepharoplasty surgery, I do over a hundred facelifts a year and probably about 200 eyelids. So my aging face procedures have doubled and my rhinoplasty procedures have about halved, but it all works out because she's doing great stuff and she's amazing. So I'm happy to have her as part of my practice.

Eva Sheie (08:03):
Now we've heard you on at least one other podcast, which is the Park Avenue Plastic Surgery Class with Dr. Bass, which is one of our favorites. You might be the number one guest on that podcast. Are there others that you've been on?

Dr. Bloom (08:15):
I've been on a few different podcasts over the years when people ask me, but certainly Larry Bass and I are friends. He's an NYU plastics guy and I am an NYU facial plastics guy. But we see each other pretty regularly because we do a lot of clinical research. We do a lot of things for the companies looking at how we rate fillers and injectables and the results of surgery. They're called scales and this validations, and we're kind of a regular within that group. So every time I see him, he'll catch me and say, okay, we need a new idea for the podcast. What do you want to talk about? So there are a few coming up that we're going to record again.

Eva Sheie (08:59):
Oh, can you give us a sneak?

Dr. Bloom (09:00):
Yeah. I think we're going to do one on fat grafting, which is certainly very exciting. And fat grafting is interesting because it's not just taking fat out into putting it back. There's things that you can do to clean and purify the fat. There are things you can do to size the fat. There's a lot of misnomers in the field, people talking about nano fat, which isn't really fat. Nano fat is just the stem cells and the growth factors that you get from the fat cell. And when you size it down that small, you're not getting the actual fat cell. So there's a lot of things that people don't know and even surgeons. And so we're trying to just increase that visibility. And then I think a huge hot topic right now is how we're treating both surgically and non-surgically, the patients that are having these rapid massive weight losses with some of the glucagon like peptide receptor agonists. So whether it's semaglutide, tirzepatide, how that market and is changing not just from a rate weight loss perspective, because I think he's done some of that in his podcast and talked about that, but how we're treating the face the body after these patients are undergoing these transformations.

Eva Sheie (10:24):
This is a very important topic. It's actually a topic I care about a lot. I try not to bring it up, but I've lost almost a hundred pounds and my face is my predominant concern. So I know I'm not the only one because there's so many people who've gone through that.

Dr. Bloom (10:37):
It's really interesting. And actually last night I spoke for Galderma at a restaurant and there is a study going on and I presented the interim three months data showing that the use of some of their fillers and biostimulatory agents are effective, safe, and actually patients are really liking the results of their treatments after they've undergone weight loss with these meds. So a lot of companies too, I can't share all of them, but I'm doing a lot of work with a few different companies that are specifically targeting volumizing, the face after these. So it's a hot topic. People are talking about it.

Eva Sheie (11:21):
I saw you at Octane too, and when I left, I thought, that was the one thing I didn't do was say hi to Dr. Bloom. What I wanted to ask you then, and now I get to ask you today is, do you remember the data point that the biostimulators were up and the fillers were down?

Dr. Bloom (11:38):
Totally.

Eva Sheie (11:38):
That was the one slide where I was like, oh, I need a picture.

Dr. Bloom (11:41):
Guidepoint Q site. They do some really great data and it's amazing. And actually just to go back, I learned really interesting things about the weight loss market there, and that was one of the reasons why I kind of jumped into my practice is that these medicines are becoming the gateway drug for aesthetics. And it's really interesting that 50% of the patients that are out there googling weight loss medicines, semaglutide, tirzepatide, Mounjaro, whatever it is, have never been into an aesthetic office. And the second stat that was really interesting to me is of those 50% of the patients that actually come into your office, 70% of those patients are actually staying for other treatments. They want it all right? They want skincare, they want plastic surgery, they want weight loss, all these things. I've always said, an aesthetic patient is an aesthetic patient and they want all these kind of things. It's great. It's kind of opening up their eyes. They're feeling better about their bodies, they're feeling better about themselves. They want everything.

Eva Sheie (12:51):
I agree with all your reasons. I also argue that aesthetic practices are really nice places to go. They're comfortable, people are nice to you, there not

Dr. Bloom (13:01):
We do that for a reason.

Eva Sheie (13:02):
Right. Why would you go, I just don't know why you'd go somewhere else for weight loss medication when you can have the experience of an aesthetic.

Dr. Bloom (13:10):
Well now you can go online and get it.

Eva Sheie (13:14):
I don't want

Dr. Bloom (13:15):
There are side effects and things that are manageable and reasonable, but wouldn't you rather have a physician or a PA or a nurse helping you through this? Like I said, with everything, I'm pretty hands-on and we have our nurses checking in on the patients weekly. They're coming in for their weigh-ins, things like that. They want that touchpoint.

Eva Sheie (13:36):
They do. They celebrate with you too.

Dr. Bloom (13:37):
Yes, totally.

Eva Sheie (13:38):
There's so much more to this than just the scale.

Dr. Bloom (13:41):
Yeah. My office is actually near the scale in our office and it's around the corner and they can't see me, but I'm tucked away in the back, but I hear them, it's like, oh my gosh, you're down another seven pounds and there's rejoicing on a regular basis and it's just great. I'm smiling when I hear that or see it. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (14:01):
Yeah. It's so much fun. I'm glad you're doing that. So if I'm listening today and I want to come see you in person, what's the best way to find out more about you and potentially reach out?

Dr. Bloom (14:12):
So the best way to find out more is to reach out on social media. My handle is @DRJBloom, Dr. J Bloom, and we also have a practice social media account @Bloom.Facial.Plastics. But really my @DRJBloom is the best. You can send me a message and we can get you hooked up.

Eva Sheie (14:34):
Amazing. It was a pleasure talking to you today. I am so glad that you made the time to fit us in.

Dr. Bloom (14:39):
Well, it's so nice to meet you in person, and I've heard so many good things from friends of mine in the industry.

Eva Sheie (14:46):
Oh, I'm so glad to hear that.

Dr. Bloom (14:47):
Keep doing what you're doing.

Eva Sheie (14:49):
Thanks, Dr. Bloom. If you are considering making an appointment or are on your way to meet this doctor, be sure to let them know you heard them on the Meet the Doctor podcast. Check the show notes for links including the doctor's website and Instagram to learn more. Are you a doctor or do you know a doctor who'd like to be on the Meet the Doctor podcast? Book your free recording session at MeettheDoctorpodcast.com. Meet the Doctor is made with love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.