SurgSpace / Specialties / Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Soft-tissue reconstruction organised as a ladder: direct closure, graft, local flap, free tissue, always the simplest rung that works. Hand surgery where millimetres are function, and burns, where the skin's failure becomes the whole body's problem.
Backdrop: A split-thickness skin graft donor site · User:Kevin308 · Public domain
Read the scan
Imaging
See the study, interpret it, then answer the surgical question.
The studies that shape surgical decision-making. Not a radiology curriculum: what the scan changes about the plan, then practice reading it.
Practice the image
Size the burn, find the danger
A house fire: burns to the anterior trunk and one whole arm, charted on arrival. (Fictional educational case.)
Synthetic educational image · rule-of-nines burn chart for practice
Size the burn honestly with the rule of nines, find the circumferential limb, and connect both to what they drive: the fluid formula and the escharotomy call.
What each study decides
Investigations
Burn area & depth assessment
- Area by rule of nines or palmar 1%, mapped on a chart rather than estimated at a glance: the resuscitation formula inherits every error.
- Depth by appearance, refill and sensation, reassessed over days: burns declare their true depth slowly, and the grafting list is written from the reassessment.
Flap monitoring
- Colour, temperature, turgor and capillary refill hourly, against a documented baseline: the trend, not any single glance, is the monitor.
- The hand-held Doppler marks the pedicle's signal; losing it is an emergency, but venous failure often keeps a signal while the flap drowns, which is why the clinical picture outranks the probe.
Hand X-ray & exploration
- Films find fractures, foreign bodies and joint involvement, but the hand's soft-tissue truth is surgical: the honest investigation for a deep hand wound is exploration in theatre.
- Glass is radio-opaque more often than assumed; organic material usually is not, and ultrasound earns its place hunting it.
Hub shaped by the Surgical Specialties Lead with the Plastic surgery reviewer (open seat). Images and videos carry their source; educational use for supervised learning, not clinical guidance.