Plastic Surgery

By Author: sudarshan singh
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Plastic surgery is a medical specialty concerned with the correction or restoration of form and function. Though cosmetic or aesthetic surgery is the best-known kind of plastic surgery, most plastic surgery is not cosmetic: plastic surgery includes many types of reconstructive surgery, hand surgery, microsurgery, and the treatment of burns.

Reconstructive surgery
Reconstructive plastic surgery is performed to correct functional impairments caused by burns; traumatic injuries, such as facial bone fractures and breaks; congenital abnormalities, such as cleft palates or cleft lips; developmental abnormalities; infection and disease; and cancer or tumors. Reconstructive plastic surgery is usually performed to improve function, but it may be done to approximate a normal appearance.

The most common reconstructive procedures are tumor removal, laceration repair, scar repair, hand surgery, and breast reduction. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the number of reconstructive breast reductions for women increased in 2007 by 2 percent from the year before. Breast reduction in men also increased in ...
... 2007 by 7 percent. Some other common reconstructive surgical procedures include breast reconstruction after a mastectomy, cleft lip and palate surgery, contracture surgery for burn survivors, and creating a new outer ear when one is congenitally absent.

Plastic surgeons use microsurgery to transfer tissue for coverage of a defect when no local tissue is available. Free flaps of skin, muscle, bone, fat, or a combination may be removed from the body, moved to another site on the body, and reconnected to a blood supply by suturing arteries and veins as small as 1 to 2 millimeters in diameter.

Cosmetic surgery
Aesthetic plastic surgery involves techniques intended for the "enhancement" of appearance through surgical and medical techniques, and is specifically concerned with maintaining normal appearance, restoring it, or enhancing it beyond the average level toward some aesthetic ideal.

Though media and advertising do play a large role in influencing many people's lives, researchers believe that plastic surgery obsession is linked to psychological disorders. Body dysmorphic disorder is seen as playing a large role in the lives of those who are obsessed with going under the knife in order to achieve physical perfection.

BDD is when someone becomes “preoccupied with what they regard as defects in their bodies or faces.” In the United States, 2% of people suffer from body dysmorphic disorder and 15% of patients seeing dermatologist and cosmetic surgeons. This disorder can also lead to suicide in some of its sufferers. Half of the patients with the disorder who get cosmetic surgery are not pleased with the result. Surgery does not treat BDD but could make the problem worse. The exact problem is actually not easily identified causing the treatment to be even more difficult. Some say its depression or depending on what part the patient is preoccupied with it could be a sub-disorder like anorexia or muscle dysmorphia.

Plastic surgery deals with the repair, reconstruction, or replacement of physical defects of form or function involving the skin, musculoskeletal system, craniomaxillofacial structures, hand, extremities, breast and trunk, external genitalia or cosmetic enhancement of these areas of the body… The plastic surgeon uses cosmetic surgical principles both to improve overall appearance and to optimize the outcome of reconstructive procedures. Special knowledge and skill in the design and surgery of grafts, flaps, free tissue transfer and replantation is necessary… Anatomy, physiology, pathology, and other basic sciences are fundamental to the specialty… Competency in plastic surgery implies an amalgam of basic medical and surgical knowledge, operative judgment, technical expertise, ethical behavior, and interpersonal skills to achieve problem resolution and patient satisfaction.

There are two main types of plastic surgery: cosmetic plastic surgery and reconstructive plastic surgery. Cosmetic surgery seeks to improve the patient’s features on a purely aesthetic level, in the absence of any actual deformity or trauma. On the other hand, the purpose of reconstructive surgery is to correct any physical feature which is grossly deformed or abnormal by accepted standards---either as the result of a birth defect, congenital disorder, illness, or trauma. Often, reconstructive surgery addresses not only a deformed appearance, but also seeks to correct or improve some deficiency or abnormality in the function of the body part in question.

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