Where to start with facial plastics...

[HEENTdude]

Facial plastics is the bane of my existence. I am a medical student and I can grasp the basic concepts of most areas of ENT. But I am just not smart or do not know where to start when trying to stuff like flaps (anything beyond single advancement is latin to me).

Any suggestions or tips?

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[ThePursuit]

Have you tried reading the plastics chapters in ENT or other surgery texts? Not that my say carries a ton of weight, but even simple stuff like a z-plasty made way more sense to me after watching a 30 second youtube video vs. reading 30 paragraphs of a book trying to describe the technique.

 

[ZagDoc]

For z-plasty, rotation flaps, etc it helps to draw them out as well. Draw the "before" and "after" relationships and pay attention how each of the "cuts" of the flap move in relation to one another. I had to color code each line that way before I finally got it because it forced me to think about how to relationship of the tissue changed.

 

[OtoHNS]

I wouldn't feel too bad. You can include nearly all junior ENT residents and quite a few senior ENT residents with you in the camp of people who don't understand local flaps.

I agree with searching for youtube vids, not sure what's on there but there's probably some good stuff.

You can also try "borrowing" some suture from the OR and actually doing the flaps yourself on a piece of cloth.

If you have some money to burn, Shan Baker has a textbook on local flaps which has pictures of how to repair every conceivable hole in someone's head and neck region.