In plastic and reconstructive surgery, innovation and creativity have been foremost, with science and evidence following. Unlike for a number of other specialties, the advances in plastic surgery have largely come from imagination, innovations, and trial and error, rather than from scientific trials. Somewhat more than for the rest of surgery, in plastics (where the art and craft of each particular surgeon counts immeasurably), randomized controlled trials of techniques have failed to be generated in the past, due to the difficulty of objectively assessing the success of surgery with an aesthetic-based nature. Consequently, evidence-based study of plastic surgery is a relatively new and developing field. This chapter focuses on the growing importance of evidence-based surgery in this specialty, showing that scientific trials are now being performed with increasing frequency.
Graduate Plastic Surgery Education and Seventy-Five Years of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
