AESTHETIC PLASTIC SURGERY

The purpose of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery is to provide a forum for the rapid publication of original articles dealing with techniques advancing the art of aesthetic plastic surgery. Although many of these articles will describe surgical craftsmanship per se others will deal with complications in surgical procedures and methods by which to treat or avoid them. "Second thoughts" about long established techniques, which should or might be abandoned, modified, or improved, as well as symposia devoted to the controversies arising from the use of one particular technique vs. another and the lessons to be learned from these dialogues will be included. Individual or isolated case histories, which may add to the specialty's increasing fund of knowledge and its advancement; improvements in surgical instruments, pharmaceuticals, and operating room equipment of use to the aesthetic plastic surgeon; and discussions of ancillary problems in aesthetic plastic surgery, such as the role of psychosocial factors in the doctor-patient and the patient-public interrelationships, are all to be presented. The role of preventive medicine and genetic counseling in averting some of the conditions that ultimately require aesthetic surgical correction, as well as certain factors that influence the patient's and surgeon's aesthetic judgement in relation to the overall appearance of a body feature, and the importance of physical anthropology in understanding the patient's ethnic requirements for a particular type of surgical procedure will be discussed. The history of the development and continuing growth of aesthetic plastic surgery and the attitudes of "society" and "the public" concerning the "justification" for the use of aesthetic plastic surgery will be dealt with. Perhaps most importantly, papers and reports are to be published discussing the increasing role of aesthetic plastic surgery as the final step in the overall rehabilitation of patients undergoing longstanding and tedious reconstructive surgery for the repair of congenital, acquired, accidental and neoplastic defects.