Today we’d like to introduce you to Raghu Athre.
Hi Raghu, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Hi. My name is Raghu Athre. I am a facial plastic surgeon here in Houston Texas. I started my journey in MUmbai, India. I was born in Mumbai – “called Bombay at the time.” My parents moved frequently through the middle East when I was young, and I finally moved to Houston, Texas. At the time, all I knew about Houston was that it was the Space City, and that Texas was famous for cowboys. I fully expected everyone to ride a horse, wear boots, and walk around in a cowboy hat.
After finishing high school in Houston, I moved to Austin and pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. From there, I spent the next 9 years of my life in Dallas. I finished medical school and a residency in ENT/Head & Neck surgery at Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical School before completing a coveted facial plastic surgery fellowship with William Silver, MD in Atlanta Georgia. After my fellowship, I decided to come back home to Houston and start my own private practice specializing in facial plastic surgery.
The first 5 years of my practice primarily focused on reconstructive facial plastics, and I transitioned into an aesthetic based practice 13 years ago. Thats, me.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not a smooth road. The first year of practice was insane. I had almost no money, and I started a facial plastic surgery practice in the middle of the BIG RECESSION of the early 2000’s – right when the sub-prime mortgage bubble burst. It was very hard. for the first 4 months, I had no office. My car was my office. I had a woman named Terry who was my assistant. My father’s secretary had a fresh grad daughter from high school, Sam, who was my receptionist. Sam had a cell phone and would field calls from doctors who needed consultations on their patients for things such as a cancer screening or a suspicious lesion. Samantha would tell Terry, who would pack a tackle box of supplies and I would see the patient the same day at the referring doctor’s office. My car was my office!
From there we got our first office, but soon learned that we need to move to Houston from Clear Lake, Texas. That was the very first jump that we did was to move to the Houston Galleria.
The ride from that point has been fulfilling, but far from smooth.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Athre Facial Plastics?
Our practice is a very small family. We have always had less than 5 employees, and the atmosphere has always been more akin to a family rather than a true organization.
We specialize in aesthetic surgery of the eyes, nose, face, and neck. The early years of the practice involved almost 75% rhinoplasty surgery, but we have evolved into primarily a facial rejuvenation practice. I do not know all the reasons for this evolution but it works for us, and I find myself very fulfilled in facial rejuvenation.
I am known for complex revision rhinoplasty and advanced facial rejuvenation including full facial rejuvenation under local anesthesia.
What sets us apart from the everyone else in the market is that we focus on the whole patient. Our job is not to operate and walk away. We have been leaders in the filed of recuperation after facial surgery investing in on-site high intensity LED and hyperbaric oxygen for our patients.. This attention to detail and emphasis on the patient journey has allowed us to perform more advanced and in-depth surgeries WITHOUT increasing the downtime for our patients and many cases shortening the overall downtime for recuperation.
Yet, all of this is done in a family-like atmosphere. Our patients are our family!
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Growing up I was a nerd. I studied really hard, and was good in all the STEM stuff. But I loved sports. I played tennis and basketball competitively, and played almost every sport decently.
I also was very much a renaissance type experimentalist. I liked taking cars apart, played classical music, and performed quite a few chemistry experiments in the back yard. The neighbors definitely had an exciting time seeing smoke clouds billowing from the back yard on more than one occasion as a result of a failed experiment! I think the fire department was called out 2-3 times.
Pricing:
- Facelift $35k+
- Rhinoplasty $10k+
- Blepharoplasty $3k+
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.athrefacialplastics.com
- Instagram: @drraghuathre
- Facebook: @athrefacialplastics
- Youtube: @AthreFacialPlastics
