The Miracle of Plastic Surgery for Burn Victims

While plastic surgery is often associated with cosmetic improvement, attraction, people’s careers, and media personas the surgical procedure is also a lifeline that has returned burn victims to some level of normalcy for burn victims. It’s because of plastic surgery that many such victims can have functional lives again after suffering serious injuries that would otherwise have left them in full disfigurement.

Fire and the Body

The nature of fire and burns produces a horrible injury to suffer from. Not only is there immediate damage that occurs to the body from exposure to the flame in the heat, which leaves tremendous damage and scarring when it does heal up, but there is also the disfigurement factor to soft tissue. Dr. Joel Aronowitz has seen where emergency doctors and following surgeons frequently have to make hard decisions to remove or amputate body parts that are too damaged in some instances. The combination can leave a recovering victim with a dramatic loss of normal life capability.

Repairing the Damage

Plastic surgery has become instrumental in helping burn victims recover successfully. While the burn injuries just don’t disappear and go back to the day before the injury ever happened, the procedures provide direct help in removing damaging scar tissue that creates inflexibility, limitations, and painful movement. That alone can be the difference between being able to function on a basic daily level and being forever handicapped after being burned. Plastic surgery also includes re-shaping damaged soft tissue so that it is closer to a normal appearance. It also helps address the loss of critical soft tissue that would affect appearance. For example, visible areas like eyelids, ears, and lips can be repaired via plastic surgery for a more natural-looking appearance. The same procedures that have restored people’s faces after horrendous animal attacks can be used for burn victims too. 

Current Options are Not Perfect Though

There is no question that modern science still has a ways to go regarding helping burn victims, but the breakthroughs and improvements in plastic surgery and what has been applied to them with the latest treatment can only be called amazing versus what was available just 10 years ago. Instead of being locked in a scarred body for the rest of one’s life, Joel Aronowitz MD agrees that burn victims have far more of a chance of some normalcy today thanks to surgical breakthroughs. That includes being able to use hands again, walking without pain from stretching, and being able to do something as simple as a smile. 

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