Saving lives and limbs

RECONSTRUCTIVE Plastic surgery is not just nose jobs and skin lifting, it salvages mangled body parts too

LUCKNOW: If you thought plastic surgery was all about nose jobs and wrinkle removal processes involving lots of money and vanity, you couldn’t be more wrong. Plastic surgery these days saves the life and limbs of many, including the poor injured in road accidents, so that they may continue to earn a livelihood. Also, those undergoing cancer operations are helped through reconstructive surgery.

If figure correction, hair removal, eyelid-lift, chin/cheek implantation or liposuction add beauty to women of all ages, flap surgery, facial reconstruction and hand/limb surgery save people injured in accidents.

“After Angelina Jolie got to know her chance of contracting breast cancer due to the BRCA1 gene, she opted for a preventative mastectomy, to reduce the chances. Following mastectomy procedure, first stage breast reconstruction was also done by placing tissue expanders with allograft that gave her the looks back,” said plastic surgeon in King George’s Medical University and honorary secretary of the Indian Medical Association, Lucknow branch, Dr Vijay Kumar.

“More than the number of patients coming for figure correction, there are patients who need to be saved from limb amputation. Plastic surgeons are engaged more in microvascular surgeries these days, saving limbs or fingers of those injured,” he said.

Doctors say the role of plastic surgeon has been hidden till now, like the role of an anaesthetist, who is fully responsible for the life and death of a patient when an operation is being performed under anaesthesia. Patients and their relatives recognise only the role of the surgeon and not the anaesthetist.

“Similarly, the role of the plastic surgeons is hidden, which needs to be exposed,” said plastic surgeon in Vivekananda Polyclinic and Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr Adarsh Kumar.

However, despite its crucial role in saving lives, plastic surgery is yet to earn a status at par with other branches of medical science, like orthopaedic surgery or general surgery.

In fact, some of the pioneer medical institutions in the country do not even have a plastic surgery department. All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) New Delhi does not have plastic surgery as a specific branch. Even SGPGIMS got the branch started this year only.