What does a Plastic Surgeon do?

 

Plastic Surgery is a medical specialty concerned with the "correction" or restoration of form and function.

 

Though cosmetic or aesthetic surgery is the best-known kind of plastic surgery, plastic surgery is not all about cosmetic and includes many different types of surgery, including, amongst others:-

 

• Reconstructive surgery

• Hand surgery

• Microsurgery

• Treatment of burns.

 

Why is it called “Plastic” surgery though?

 

In the term plastic surgery, the adjective plastic denotes sculpting or reshaping, which is derived from the Greek, plastikē (tekhnē), “the art of modelling” of malleable body tissue.

 

The surgical definition of "plastic" first appeared in 1839.

 

It predates the modern "engineering material made from petroleum" sense of plastic (coined by Leo Baekeland in 1909) by seventy years.