Frank McDowell

Reconstructive Plastic Surgery: Principles and Procedures in Correction, Reconstruction and Transplantation

ABSTRACT The five large volumes of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery constitute the only extant encyclopedia of plastic surgery. As such, they should be in the reference library of every institution and hospital teaching surgery, as well as in the working library of every plastic surgeon and student of plastic surgery.This is not to say, however, that this encyclopedia is without faults nor that it is, say, a plastic-surgery equivalent of Duke-Elders work in ophthalmology. All works of this sort (particularly when as many as 76 authors are involved) are liable to complications of timid editing, mistakes in assignments, failure of some authors to come through, and writing that may be erratic and contradictory. On all of these points the present work suffers more than most encyclopedias.Exemplary chapters include those on congenital deformities of the auricle, rare craniofacial deformities, deformities of the jaws, hypospadias and epispadias, reconstructive surgery of the abdominal