The Potential Impact of Plastic Surgery Expertise on Body Contouring Procedure Outcomes

With the increasing demand for body contouring procedures in the United States over the past 2 decades, more surgeons with diverse specialty training are performing these procedures. However, little is known regarding the comparative outcomes of these patients.

The purpose of this study was to compare outcomes of body contouring procedures based on the specialty training of the surgeon.

Data from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (2005-2015) were reviewed for all body contouring procedures. Patients were stratified by surgeon training (plastic surgery [PS] vs general surgery [GS]). Descriptive statistics and regression analyses were used to evaluate differences in outcomes.

A total of 11,658 patients were included; 9502 PS cases and 2156 GS cases. Most were women (90.4%), aged 40 to 59 (52.7%) and white (79.5%). Compared with PS patients, GS patients were more likely to be obese (61.4% vs 40.6%), smokers (13.6% vs 9.8%), and with ASA classification ≥3 (35.3% vs 18.6%) (all P < 0.001). Abdominal contouring procedures were the most common (76%) cases. Multivariate regression revealed that compared with PS cases, those performed by GS practitioners were associated with increased wound and infectious complications (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.81; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.44-2.27), reoperation (aOR, 1.85; 95% CI, 1.31-2.62), and predicted mean length of stay (1.12 days; 95% CI, 0.64-1.60 days).

The variable outcomes in body contouring procedures performed by PS compared with GS practitioners may imply procedural-algorithmic differences between the subspecialties, leading to the noted outcome differential.