In Pursuit of Perfection: The Art of Facial Restoration

One of the common traits that inspire young surgeons to pursue a calling in the reconstructive arts is a passion for restoration. The ability to restore balance and harmony to the human form, to re-create function and beauty in an area where it has been lost or compromised, is one of the requisite fundamental skills that all plastic surgeons seek to acquire and perfect throughout their career. It is the sine qua non in the art of aesthetic and reconstructive surgery.

Facial defects created by Mohs micrographic surgery provide reconstructive surgeons with outstanding opportunities to enhance the lives of their patients by returning what has been taken from them…a sense of normalcy. While providing the most conservative yet definitive form of surgical extirpation for most types of skin cancer, Mohs surgery can nonetheless create tremendously disfiguring cutaneous defects. These wounds often result in significant emotional distress for patients who wonder if they will ever look like themselves again. The ability to restore form and function during this vulnerable time in their lives, even if only approximate, is one of the great rewards of the profession. Their expressions of gratitude provide ample professional satisfaction and motivation to further refine one’s surgical skills in the pursuit of excellence.

Of course, to achieve the type of outcomes that will result in a happy patient and a happy surgeon, a thorough mastery of the essentials is an imperative, allowing the surgeon to apply a knowledgeable analysis of the “reconstructive ladder” to their surgical decision-making process. This issue of Facial Plastic Surgery Clinics was designed with the intent of providing a thorough review of the science and art of facial reconstruction post-Mohs surgery, a review that it is hoped will be a valuable resource not only to a budding facial plastic surgeon but also to the most seasoned of reconstructive surgeons.

Our contributing authors were each chosen for their distinguished knowledge and expertise in the fields of facial reconstructive surgery and dermatology. I am deeply grateful for their insightful contributions to this project and am honored to have been able to work with each of them. It is our collective hope that you, the reader, will find this tome to be a useful tool in your armamentarium of surgical resources. If we have, in any way, contributed to better surgical outcomes for our patients, then we count this endeavor a resounding success.

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