Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Checklist: A Safety Tool

About one in ten patients experiences iatrogenic events, and more than half of these occur in the perioperative environment. The objective of this study was to develop a complete and functional checklist for aesthetic plastic surgery and test it in patients who would undergo elective plastic surgeries.

Patient data were collected from a general hospital and the particular clinic between October 2013 and October 2015, through history, physical examination, diagnosis, laboratory tests, pre-, during, and postoperatively, and complications. An expanded safety checklist was developed and optimized for aesthetic plastic surgery based on the model presented by the WHO in 2009 with reference to the information related to the prevention of more frequent complications in this specialty.

The tool was applied to 486 patients, of whom 430 (88 %) were women and 56 (12 %) were men. The most frequently performed procedure was liposuction with 30 % of cases, and the most widely used type of anesthesia (39 %) was local anesthesia + sedation. The greater adherence of professionals to the checklist was the group of residents (98 %). The observed complications were seromas (7 %), other complications unrelated to the wound (3 %), and hematoma (0.2 %) in only one patient who underwent facelift.

The use of the checklist in addition to allowing data collection and the identification of potential risks promoted favorable changes in the attitudes of some professionals and generated interest in patient safety and teamwork.

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