The Role of Anti-Inflammatory Nutrition in Facial Cosmetic Surgery Outcomes: A Scoping Review

Prolonged inflammatory responses are associated with impaired wound healing, increased surgical complications, and poor health outcomes. Additionally, anti-inflammatory diet and nutrition have been shown to reduce harmful inflammatory markers in the body. However, the relationship between anti-inflammatory diet and surgical outcomes remains poorly understood in cosmetic surgery populations.

This scoping review aims to evaluate the quality and quantity of the current literature regarding the impact of the anti-inflammatory diet on facial cosmetic surgery outcomes.

Scoping Review following PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines.

A literature search was performed in PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and CINAHL with keywords relating to anti-inflammatory diet, surgical outcomes, and elective surgery. Duplicate articles were removed, and the remaining were reviewed by two independent reviewers. Inclusion criteria consisted of studies with elective surgery patients, immunomodulating nutritional interventions, and outcomes relating to facial cosmetic surgery. Exclusion criteria included studies focused on gastrointestinal surgery, oncological surgery, emergent surgery, total parenteral nutrition, or malnourished populations. Additionally, we excluded systematic reviews, commentaries, editorials, abstracts, non-English studies, and protocols.

Our literature search yielded 2,954 articles, of which 36 articles underwent full-text review, and 7 studies met inclusion criteria. There was substantial variability in surgeries performed, study quality, specialties covered, outcome measures, and interventions. Three studies reported clinical outcomes such as wound complications or postoperative morbidity, whereas the remaining four studies focused on immune cell recovery and inflammatory markers. Importantly, multiple studies demonstrated statistically significant improvements in length of hospital stay, inflammatory markers, or complication rates. Unfortunately, no studies evaluated facial cosmetic surgery directly.

While the evidence is extremely limited, anti-inflammatory nutrition shows promise in modulating factors that are related to cosmetic surgery outcomes. These findings suggest that anti-inflammatory diets and nutrition for cosmetic surgery patients warrant further investigation.