“I warn patients, before we do radiofrequency (RF), Ultherapy, Kybella, thread lifts, or even ablative lasers, that if they one day decide to have plastic surgery, these treatments can make future operations more difficult,” says Dr. Sarmela Sunder, a board-certified facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, California—and one of many doctors taking informed consent to the next level with this novel disclosure.

If Dr. Sunder’s words don’t give you pause, perhaps that’s because you, like so many of her patients, view noninvasives as a sort of get-out-of-surgery-free card. “It’s a real challenge to get people to understand the seriousness of the commitment they’re making with nonsurgical treatments,” she says. “They’re not thinking that they’re ever going to be a surgical candidate. But fast-forward two or five or 10 years—and, suddenly, they are.”