Hurricane Katrina put plastic surgeon Jonathan Kaplan’s career on a new course.
Kaplan had finished his residency in general surgery at LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans two months before the storm. Shortly after completing a fellowship at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Kaplan was offered the opportunity to found the Center for Reconstructive and Cosmetic Surgery in conjunction with Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center.
“If the Hurricane Katrina had not hit New Orleans, I would not have had the same opportunities in Baton Rouge,” he says.
Kaplan also is one of a handful of plastic surgeons statewide who offers the DIEP flap procedure, a newer method to transplant abdominal tissue to create a new breast after a mastectomy without sacrificing muscles in the abdomen that would be damaged during older procedures with the risk of hernias.
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Kaplan always wanted to be like his father and become a surgeon. When he got a chance to observe a visiting plastic surgeon perform a routine procedure as a teenager, he had found his calling.
“It was nothing majorly complex, but at that time and that age, I was blown away,” he says. “I was fascinated by it.”
Kaplan established the Dr. Bernard Kaplan Memorial Plastic Surgery Fellowship in memory of his father. The award sends a senior plastic-surgery fellow to an overseas conference every other year.
About 70% of the procedures Kaplan performs are reconstructive. When you hold the looks of a patient literally in your hands, he says, the best approach is to make sure they know what is and isn’t possible.
“As long as they have reasonable expectations, you will have a very satisfied, happy patient,” he says.
Kaplan, an Edgar Bronfman Fellowship recipient, is heavily involved in fundraising chairman of the Jewish Federation of Greater Baton Rouge of the annual campaign. His latest project is as co-chairman of the Young Professionals mission trip to Morocco on behalf of the Joint Distribution Committee, where members from around the country will take a look at some of the social programs to which they have donated.
“I’m excited about it,” he says. “I’ve never been to Morocco, and it seemed like a great opportunity to go and see what our money’s going to.”
Age: 36
If you could have a job other than your own, what would it be? “An auto mechanic. Fixing things and getting them back to working. What’s more useful than knowing how to fix a car?
Click here for the complete list of 2009's Forty Under 40 winners.
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