An Explanation of the Medical Field of Plastic Surgery..
We continually hear of the rich and famous and the not so rich and famous having plastic surgeries for everything from face lifts, breast augmentations along with skin tightening. Many seem to become addicted to these procedures and we all have witnessed those celebrity that have destroyed their faces. So just what is creditable plastic surgery and its contribution to the medical field.
Plastic surgery is a specialty concerned with the correction or restoration of form and function and also includes two main fields: plastic and reconstructive surgery.
The word “plastic” derives from the Greek word plastikos meaning to mold or to shape; its use here is not connected with the synthetic polymer material known as plastic.
There are many types of reconstructive Plastic Surgery that is performed to correct functional impairments caused by: Burns, traumatic injuries, such as facial bone fractures ,congenital abnormalities, such as cleft lip, or cleft palate, developmental abnormalities, infection or disease, removal of cancers or tumors, such as a mastectomy for a breast cancer, a head or neck cancer or an abdominal invasion by a colon cancer.
Today plastic surgeons have documentation on the results of any procedure such as thermage before and after photos.Microsurgery has recently been developed by plastic surgeons, to transfer tissue for coverage of a defect when no local tissue is available like tissue 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 1-2 mm in diameter.
American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports that the number of reconstructive breast reductions for women increased in 2007 by 2 percent from the year before with breast reduction in men increasing in 2007 by 7 percent, however the most common reconstructive procedures are tumor removal, laceration repair, scar repair, hand surgery and breast reduction.
