The Plastic Surgery Room

Episode 41: Cleft Lip and Cleft Palate From Embryology to Surgical Repair

In this episode, we review cleft lip and cleft palate from a plastic surgery resident’s perspective. We will cover embryology, anatomy, classification, associated syndromes, timing of repair, surgical principles, multidisciplinary care, and long-term follow-up. The episode focuses on how to think clinically and surgically about cleft patients, from newborn evaluation to lip repair, palate repair, speech outcomes, alveolar bone grafting, and secondary revisions.

Episode 40: SCIP Flap in Plastic Surgery

In this episode, we explore the superficial circumflex iliac artery perforator flap, known as the SCIP flap. Designed for plastic surgery residents, this episode explains the anatomy, indications, flap design, surgical technique, advantages, limitations, and common uses of the SCIP flap in reconstructive surgery. We will focus on why the SCIP flap is popular for thin soft-tissue reconstruction, especially in the extremities, head and neck, hand, foot, and pediatric reconstruction.

Episode 39: Sutures in Plastic Surgery: Choosing the Right Thread for the Right Tissue

In this episode, we review the essential types of sutures used in plastic surgery, focusing on how to choose the correct thread based on tissue type, wound tension, location, healing time, and cosmetic outcome. Designed for plastic surgery residents, this episode explains absorbable vs non-absorbable sutures, monofilament vs braided sutures, and common materials such as Vicryl, Monocryl, PDS, Nylon, Prolene, Silk, and fast-absorbing gut. We will also discuss when each suture is used in facial wounds, breast surgery, abdominal closure, hand surgery, flap surgery, mucosal closure, and delicate cosmetic closures.

Episode 38: Rhinoplasty — Anatomy, Grafts, Valves, and Everything the Resident Must Know Before Scrubbing In

The nose is not one structure. It is three vaults, two valves, six grafts, and one artery that becomes the entire tip blood supply the moment the columellar incision is made. The keystone area and why hump reduction opens the roof, the L-strut and why violating it produces a saddle nose, the spreader graft that simultaneously corrects valve collapse, the inverted-V, and the open roof, the septal extension graft that functions as the steering wheel of the tip, the lateral osteotomy that must stop below the medial canthus, and the empty nose syndrome that cannot be undone. Episode 38 — rhinoplasty anatomy and grafts, from the three vaults to the one graft that does three things.

Episode 37: Types of Abdominoplasty

The abdominoplasty is not one operation — it is five. And choosing the wrong one produces a result that is better than nothing and worse than it should have been. Huger zones, Scarpa's fascia, T7–T12 and the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve, the perforator-preserving logic of lipoabdominoplasty, the superolateral tension vector of high-lateral-tension, the T-junction that always breaks in fleur-de-lis, and the IMF distortion that only happens when you operate from above.