[Quality of scientific publications about cosmetic surgery]

Ethical and methodological quality of scientific papers on cosmetic surgery is often criticised. This is why we have proposed to create and validate an ethical and a methodological grid in the field of cosmetic surgery.

A questionnaire had been mailed to 40 cosmetic surgeons. The questionnaire was voluntary and simple and included two open questions and the possibility of giving one's opinion on this subject. The first question was: "Please mention, without describing your first ten methodological criteria, when you decide to evaluate a scientific publication concerning cosmetic surgery". The second question was written exactly in the same way, except that the word "methodological" was replaced by the word "ethical".

In the methodological field, our results are the same as the classical criteria that permit answers the following questions: what did you do?, why did you do?, how did you do?, what did you find?, what is the meaning of this finding?, what is the future of this finding? Finally, except for the importance of comparing before and after photography, our criteria are not so different from the methodological criteria of all scientific studies. In the ethical field, in a decreasing order, we found the balance of benefits and risks, the probity of the author, the respect for the a priori equivalence clause, the disclosure of conflicts interest, the quality of the iconography, the respect for legislation, the transparency on the effective work of each author, the existence of rules for early stopping of the study and the transparency on preliminary animal studies if necessary.

Similar to the existing practice, a study could be refused for publication because of its methodological insufficiencies; in the future, more and more studies would be refused because of their ethical insufficiencies.