Plastic surgery is basically the transfer of tissue to different parts of the body whether it’s to repair an injury or for cosmetic reasons. For example, fire survivors often receive what’s called debriding to remove the dead tissue prior to the skin grafts. Skin grafts are a prime example of tissue transfer as it involves transferring the outer tissue of the healthy skin left on the body.
Plastic Surgery vs. Cosmetic Surgery
Most people assume that plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery are one and the same. Though that’s not quite so. Plastic surgery can be done for both medical reasons and appearance enhancement. Cosmetic surgery, though it often is performed by plastic surgeons, focuses exclusively one appearance. Cosmetic surgery includes facial contouring, facial rejuvenation, breast augmentation, body contouring, and skin rejuvenation. Botox injections count as skin rejuvenation. Enhancing aesthetic appeal and correcting asymmetry are the main goals of cosmetic surgery. Since it’s exclusively elective, it can be performed on all areas of the head and neck.
Other Forms of Plastic Surgery
Some other reconstructions that involved in plastic surgery include hare lip repair, scar revision, hand surgery, and lower extremity reconstruction. Hand surgery corrects pain in the fingers, palm, wrist or arm. It corrects issues such as carpel-tunnel syndrome, wrist pain, sports injuries, and reconstructs fingers from toes and joints. Lower extremity reconstruction deals with repairing limbs after an injury, correcting arthritis, and other vascular diseases. Carpel-tunnel syndrome is numbness or weakness in the hand due to pressure on the median nerve. The median nerve runs through the carpal tunnel-or wrist area-into the hand.
How Plastic Surgery Training is Completed
Like most medical professions, plastic surgery training is completed through a residency. However, physicians must be trained in general surgery first. Then plastic surgery training takes an additional two years. The residency training often includes cosmetic surgery. However, those wanting to pursue plastic surgery specifically are not trained in every cosmetic procedure. So clients looking for a Plastic Surgeon Austin are not advised to assume that the title, “Board Certified Plastic Surgeon” indicates that the physician is necessarily trained in cosmetic surgery. In fact, cosmetic surgeons are required to be members of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery. They are required to complete only one full year of training exclusively in cosmetic surgery in addition to 3-5 years in a similar field. In most areas, they also have to perform a minimum of 300 supervised cosmetic procedures before they can become licensed and work on their own.
Teens and Plastic Surgery
As unbelievable as this sounds to some people, a minority of adolescents seek out plastic or cosmetic surgery as a way to fit in. It’s usually to correct some defect that they do have or think they have. These are usually conditions such as pulling back ears that stick out to correcting gynecomastia in adolescent males. However, there is the question as to whether plastic surgery is really all that beneficial to minors as it may not be able to keep up with their growth and/or there’s the question of whether they’ll be able to handle the consequences of the results.
