The first medical workplace Leo Lapuerta knew belonged to his father. The elder Lapuerta practiced as a pulmonologist in San Antonio, and he brought his son along to work.
“My father was a pulmonologist in San Antonio and took me with him to work and I knew I wanted to go to medical school when I went to Stanford.” Decades later, Dr. Leo Lapuerta is a triple board-certified plastic surgeon in the Houston area with more than 30 years of experience and more than 30,000 surgical and non-surgical procedures to his name.
A Spanish-speaking home in San Antonio
The family’s story starts in Valencia, Spain, where his parents came from before they immigrated to the United States. He was raised in San Antonio, and Spanish was his first language. He is fluent in English as well, and he describes growing up in a bilingual home with Spanish parents in America.
He credits that household with giving him a particular view of how doctors and patients talk to each other, including the expectations patients bring and the different ways cultures define beauty. Today his practice keeps bilingual English and Spanish support staff so that Spanish-speaking patients can work with the office in the language they think in.
Stanford, and a choice of specialty
He went to Stanford University for his undergraduate studies, and that is where he settled on medicine. He then attended UT Southwestern Medical School, where surgery took hold.
“In medical school, I fell in love with surgery and pursued plastic surgery because it is the most challenging surgical speciality and allows me to help all ages of both female and male patients.”
He describes the appeal in practical terms. Plastic surgery lets him work with the anatomy each patient presents, with its benefits and limitations, and apply his skills to produce a result that looks right and functions well.
Sixteen years of training
After medical school came general surgery training at St. John’s Hospital in Detroit, followed by a plastic and reconstructive surgery fellowship at St. Joseph Hospital in Houston. By his count, he completed 16 years of education and training after high school.
He is candid that the path was competitive at each stage, from medical school admission to plastic surgery. He lists what it took: native intelligence and hard work, a willingness to give up short-term pleasures for long-term gain, and the stamina to push through the physical and mental fatigue of medical school and residency while keeping a healthy mental state.
Along the way he earned three board certifications: the American Board of Plastic Surgery, the American Board of Surgery and Surgery of the Hand. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
Houston: surgeon, chairman, teacher
Houston became home base. Dr. Lapuerta serves as Chairman of Plastic Surgery at St. Joseph Hospital, the same institution where he completed his fellowship. He also teaches surgeons in training as faculty serving UT-Houston Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship at Houston Methodist Hospital.
He is a past President of the Houston Society of Plastic Surgeons and a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the Texas Society of Plastic Surgeons. His practice runs offices in the Houston area, including Pearland, Houston and Katy, and he owns and operates a QuadA (AAAASF) accredited surgical facility where he works with physician anesthesiologists.
Outside the practice, he has made many trips with Operation San Jose, providing plastic and reconstructive surgery to children and adults with genetic and developmental deformities in underserved areas of Mexico, Central and South America.
His advice to patients reflects the long road he took. In his view, the best determinant of an outcome patients are happy with is a board-certified surgeon with extensive experience in the specific procedure, counted in both the number of cases and the years spent performing it. For the son who tagged along to his father’s work in San Antonio, his own count of procedures, surgical and non-surgical, now runs past 30,000.
This article is for general information only and is not medical advice. Results vary from patient to patient. Consult a board-certified plastic surgeon or your physician about your own situation. Written in partnership with Joseph Lambert, a publicist working with Leo Lapuerta, MD Plastic Surgery.