Corvallis may not be Miami or Los Angeles, but plastic surgery is still popular here.

According to Samaritan Health Services surgeons Dr. Richard Havard and Dr. Todd Willcox, about 60 percent of the work they do is reconstructive surgery, including breast reconstruction after mastectomy surgery. The other 40 percent is cosmetic surgery, but there aren’t a lot of requests for breast augmentation and face lifts.

“Patients in the Northwest have more realistic expectations about cosmetic surgery,” Willcox said. “They aren’t asking to look like a celebrity.”

Havard and Willcox are currently operating in separate practices, but Samaritan Health Services has hired them to become part of a comprehensive plastic and reconstructive surgery practice, the first of its kind for the regional health care system. Their joint office in the planned Samaritan Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Clinic will be built within the next two years as part of a major expansion of Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center.

While a majority of the work done by Havard and Willcox is reconstructive, even their cosmetic operations are often done for health-related reasons. In fact, the most popular request these days is breast reduction.

“I make a lot more breasts smaller than bigger,” Havard said. Usually, the requests are made by women who are having health problems because of the large size of their chests, or who find that their bust gets in the way of doing physical activities that would help them lose weight in other areas.

Another popular procedure is body contouring, often following bariatric surgery, for patients who have lost large amounts of weight and need to get loose skin tucked and adjusted to their smaller bodies.

Other physical changes, such as childbirth, also leave bodies changed, and sometimes patients use surgery to regain their former shapes.

“A lot of young mothers want their bodies back so they’ll have abdomoplasty (tummy tucks) and breast lifts and augmentation,” Havard said.

Nonsurgical procedures, also offered at Havard and Willcox’s clinics, are skyrocketing in popularity. Botox, skin tightening, fillers and other procedures are becoming more prevalent. Willcox and Havard call the procedures “rejuvenation,” rather than dramatically altering the person’s original look.

“We’re not making people look artificially young or enhanced,” Willcox said.

As a rule, Willcox and Havard will not operate cosmetically on teens because their bodies have usually not stopped growing, and they also want to make sure that they are old enough to make such dramatic decisions about their bodies. Occasionally they will perform breast reduction surgery on older teens for health reasons, but only if they can be sure that the teens won’t grow further and reduce the efficacy of the surgery.

They also take care that breast surgery won’t impact their ability to nurse if they choose to have children.

“We worry about function,” Havard said, “and we try to preserve anatomy.”

Although it will be two years before they share a building, Havard and Willcox are already looking forward to sharing space in the new Samaritan facility.

Right now, the two surgeons operate individual clinics through Samaritan Health Services, but joining forces will help them in a lot of ways.

“There will be more continuity of care for patients,” Havard said. “We’ll help cover for each other, and bounce ideas off one another.”

Working within a team of other medical professionals is already something Havard and Willcox do on a regular basis, especially when it comes to breast reconstruction for women with breast cancer. A team of radiologists, pathologists and others work with the surgeons as they prepare to help patients during and after a mastectomy or other breast-cancer related procedure.

“We have a nice team approach to that,” Havard said.

Currently, Havard’s office is located at 2298 Kings Blvd. Willcox’s office is located at 3517 N.W. Samaritan Drive, Suite 100.