Plastic surgery facts for kids

Navy doctors perform reconstructive surgery on a 21-year-old patient

Plastic surgery is a surgery that is done to change the way a person's body looks or works. Some plastic surgeries can change both. Work can be done on someone's bones, cartilage, muscles, fat, and skin.

The two most common forms of Plastic Surgery are Reconstruction (fixing body parts that have been damaged) and Cosmetic (changing size shape or color of body parts without fixing damage). An example of reconstructive plastic surgery is fixing a part of the body that has been burned. An example of cosmetic plastic surgery is a surgery called a "Face-Lift" (pulling the skin of the face tight so that someone looks younger)..

Images for kids

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  A statue of Sushruta, the father of plastic surgery, at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Melbourne, Australia.

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  Plates vi & vii of the Edwin Smith Papyrus at the Rare Book Room, New York Academy of Medicine

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  Sushruta is considered as the Father of Plastic Surgery by many scholars

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  The Roman scholar Aulus Cornelius Celsus recorded surgical techniques, including plastic surgery, in the first century AD.

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  Illustration of an 18th-century nose reconstruction method from Poona performed by an Indian potter, from The Gentleman's Magazine, 1794

See also

In Spanish: Cirugía plástica para niños