Mr Stephen Gilbert

MBCHB (Otago), FRSC, FRACS (Plastic)

NZ Institute of Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery
243 Remuera Road
Remuera
Auckland

Phone: +64 9 529 5780
Fax: +64 9 524 6043
Email: stg@plasticsurgeons.co.nz

Mr Stephen Gilbert is founding co-director of the New Zealand Institute of Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery. His private practice is at 243 Remuera Road, Auckland. He also is Visiting Plastic Surgeon to Chelsea Hospital, Gisborne, and Honorary Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Middlemore Hospital, South Auckland, where he worked for 18 years before resigning to concentrate on his private practice.

Mr Gilbert and his staff provide a full range of cosmetic surgical services, specializing in facial enhancement such as endoscopic browlift, face and neck lifts, and eyelid surgery (blepharoplasty). All modern forms of facelift are available at the Institute, with the emphasis on achieving a natural, more youthful or rested appearance.

Stephen is New Zealand’s most experienced facelift surgeon and has trained with experts in London (Harley Street), France, New York and Los Angeles. His practice also offers a comprehensive skincare programme through Prescription Skin Care, who specialize in Botox™, dermal fillers, and facial peels.

He is also an experienced cosmetic and reconstructive rhinoplasty (nose) surgeon, treats and repairs a lot of facial skin cancers, and specializes in the correction of prominent ears. Much of his cosmetic surgery is performed at the Institute's on-site day surgery facility.

Mr Gilbert is equally interested in breast and body contouring. He introduced liposuction to New Zealand with a colleague in 1981 (the year it was first demonstrated in the USA). Where necessary, this has now become a sophisticated three-dimensional liposculpturing procedure, using ultrasound to correct longstanding disproportions of the lower body.

He also is interested in abdominoplasty to smooth out and strengthen the abdomen, even in the younger person, or after childbearing. The emphasis here is to achieve a narrow waist with three-dimensional contouring.

Mr Gilbert has considerable experience with breast enhancement, using only the most modern and softest implants (usually breast shaped rather than round implants, cohesive gel or saline, and measured to fit the patient’s figure). He recently visited Per Heden in Sweden, who has the world’s largest experience of breast augmentation using cohesive gel implants.

Stephen recently visited the world's leading breast reduction surgeons in Brazil to study short scar techniques. He has a wide experience in breast reconstruction after mastectomy, having studied these techniques in the United States and carrying out the first latissimus dorsi and TRAM flap reconstructions in New Zealand in the early 1980s. He has continued to develop and improve the results since, and has presented numerous articles on his techniques.

Mr Gilbert travels overseas extensively to share his experience with leading plastic surgeons in Europe and America. He is a past president of the New Zealand Foundation for Cosmetic Plastic Surgery; a member of the New Zealand Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons, and the Australasian Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery; and a corresponding member of the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. He also a member of the International Society for Reconstructive Microvascular Surgery, and is an ex-editorial board member of this organization.

Stephen is proud to continue the traditions and surgical excellence that were established by three New Zealand-born knights of plastic surgery Sir Harold Gillies and Sir Archibald McIndoe, who trained the third, Sir William Manchester. He was Sir William's registrar for two years and supports his philosophy that perfection in plastic surgical operations should always be sought.