Know about Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery

Plastic/cosmetic surgery can often help improve a person’s self-esteem, confidence, and overall quality of life.

 

While both cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery deal with improving a patient’s body, the overarching philosophies guiding the training, research, and goals for patient outcomes are different.

What is plastic surgery?

It is focused on repairing defects to reconstruct a normal function & appearance of a person.

 

Plastic surgery is defined as a surgical specialty dedicated to the reconstruction of facial and body defects due to birth disorders, trauma, burns, and disease. Plastic surgery is intended to correct dysfunctional areas of the body and is, by definition, reconstructive in nature.

 

Types of plastic surgery procedures:

    • Breast reconstruction
    • Burn repair surgery
    • Congenital defect repair: cleft palate, extremity defect repair
    • Lower extremity reconstruction
    • Hand surgery
    • Scar revision surgery

What is cosmetic surgery?

It is focused on enhancing patient’s appearance.


The procedures, techniques, and principles of cosmetic surgery are entirely focused on enhancing a patient’s appearance. Improving aesthetic appeal, symmetry, and proportion are the key goals. An aesthetic surgery can be performed on all areas of the head, neck, and body. Since cosmetic procedures treat areas that function properly, cosmetic surgery is designated as elective. Cosmetic elective procedures are performed by doctors from a variety of medical fields, including plastic surgeons.


Types of Cosmetic Surgery Procedures:

    • Breast enhancement: breast augmentation, breast lift, breast reduction
    • Facial contouring: rhinoplasty, chin, or cheek enhancement
    • Facial rejuvenation: facelift, eyelid lift, neck lift, brow lift
    • Body contouring: tummy tuck, liposuction, gynecomastia treatment
    • Skin rejuvenation: laser resurfacing, filler treatments

Training in the specialty of plastic surgery deals with the resection, repair, replacement, and reconstruction of defects of form and function of the integument and its underlying anatomic systems, including the craniofacial structures, the oropharynx, the trunk, the extremities, the breast, and the perineum. It includes aesthetic (cosmetic) surgery of structures with undesirable forms. Special knowledge and skill in the design and transfer of flaps, in the transplantation of tissues, and the replantation of structures are vital to these ends, as is skill in excisional surgery, the management of complex wounds, and the use of alloplastic materials.


Thus, competency in plastic surgery implies a special combination of basic knowledge, surgical judgment, technical expertise, ethics, and interpersonal skills in order to achieve satisfactory patient relationships and problem resolution. While institutions in our country offer knowledge of plastic surgery, reconstructive surgery, and burn care, most of them do not train extensively in cosmetic surgery as a curriculum. One big reason could be that the institutions are overburdened with trauma, reconstructive, and burn cases and there is an extremely small percentage of people who demand cosmetic surgery.