Plastic Surgeon Makes Cut as Inventor

0

Plastic surgeon, author and reality TV star Dr. Robert Kotler can now add “contract manufacturer” to the list of hats he’s worn. The Beverly Hills doctor who was featured on the cable show “Dr. 90210” has invented a device that allows patients to breathe through their nose after nasal surgery, and plans to start selling it to distributors next year.

Kotler, 68, said getting into the entrepreneurship game has been relatively smooth, although he joked that he may need help coming up with more clever names. He hasn’t yet thought of anything catchier to call the device than a “postoperative nasal airway,” and the company he’s formed with two partners is called Reltok Nasal Products LLC – Reltok is his last name spelled backward.

“It was the easiest thing I could think of,” he said with a laugh.

After nose surgery, patients sometimes have their nostrils packed with gauze for several days to reduce bleeding and to act as a kind of splint. Kotler’s device is the equivalent of inserting tubes into the nose to allow for breathing. He’s contracted with a company in Pacoima to make the device, and plans to make between 2,000 to 2,500 to start. Distributors would sell them to doctors for about $50 each.

“This has introduced me to another world,” he said. “My family was in manufacturing, and that’s sort of an irony. We had a four-generation family business in Chicago that started in 1926 and manufactured picture frames.”

Up in the Air

There’s a new cook in the kitchen at WP24 by Wolfgang Puck, but she’s got more talent than just preparing her favorite dish of grilled lamb chops.

Sara Johannes, who became chef de cuisine at WP24 two months ago, is an amateur trapeze artist.

Johannes, 33, took up the high-flying sport to get a vigorous workout. She said she needs it, too, because she constantly tastes dishes to make sure they’re perfect.

“It’s like tumbling for big kids,” Johannes said. “I’m always looking for fun ways to stay fit and active.”

Johannes finds trapeze more entertaining than logging time at the gym, but she had been on hiatus for a few years because she wasn’t able to find trapeze classes in Dallas, where she was serving as executive chef of Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck.

But Johannes found trapeze classes in Los Angeles, and she’s planning to get back into the swing of things – when she’s not working 12-hour days at WP24, which is on the 24th floor of downtown’s Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles.

So, what moves can Johannes do on a trapeze?

“As experts go, I’m certainly not one,” she said. “But I’ve learned how to artfully dangle from a bar.”

Staff reporters Alfred Lee and Alexa Hyland contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].

No posts to display