Postoperative Care in Facial Plastic Surgery

Alwyn D'Souza, MBBS, FRCS Eng, FRCS (ORL-HNS), PGCertMedEd, EBFPRS

It has been an honor and pleasure to serve as the Guest Editor for this edition of the Facial Plastic Surgery journal. I personally welcome you to read the journal, focusing on the postoperative care for facial plastic surgery patients. Care is defined as “the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something.” As surgeons, physicians are perceived as artists; our patients and society at large hold us in very high regard that can often be overwhelming; and according to Gawande: “dominated by a single imperative – the quest for machinelike perfection in the delivery of care.” Whether implicit or explicit, this expectation is one that few other professions endure. These ambitious standards are often unrealistic to achieve and despite knowing surgery is an inherently imperfect art, we seem to embrace and often celebrate it through our web sites, social media, and marketing, etc., thus sometimes conveying the wrong message to our patients. One of the most important aspects of aspiring to achieve such high levels is ongoing optimal postoperative care of our patients. I personally consider this to be the most important aspect of my surgical practice.

This edition discusses postoperative care for a variety of procedures to help achieve the best clinical outcome we all surgeons strive for. Some of the opinions emerge from individual surgeons' extensive experience in the field, and I am sure will help most of us to achieve better surgical outcomes, and make patients and surgeons happy.