Questions about fellowships

[Bruxomaniac]

After you complete a residency in Oral & Maxillofacial surgery are you automatically eligible to go into a fellowship in plastic or craniofacial surgery? The craniofacial fellowship program at Parkland says that 3-5 years of general surgery training and 2-3 years of plastic surgery training are required before entering. Is the OMS residency sufficient enough to meet these requirements or would you have to do more training before entering this fellowship? Anything else you would like to add about fellowships would be great.

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[toofache32]

In general, plastic surgery requires either 3 years of general surgery, complete ENT or Urology or Orthopedics or Neurosurgery residency. You can also do it with oral surgery as a dual degree with 2 years of general surgery.

Craniofacial surgery is a little different. There's a plastics side and an OMFS side. The Parkland program you're referring to is for people who complete plastics residency. There are also OMFS fellowships such as with Posnick (Washington, DC) or Costello (Pittsburgh). In my opinion, they are separated because the turf battle between the two specialties is one of the worst in health care. There are more plastics fellowships than OMFS (for craniofacial), but craniofacial surgery is more routine in OMFS with orthognathic & cleft surgery whereas few plastics guys do much more than primary clefts unless they are fellowship trained. I've also noticed trends in who performs which procedures. In many programs, it seems like plastics does more primary clefts whereas OMFS does more secondary clefts (bone grafting). My OMFS department sees other stuff like hemifacial microsomia and craniosynostosis, and I'm sure plastics here does also.

 

[River13]

If you are considering a fellowship it is a better idea to do a 6 year integrated OMS residency as you'll be more competitive for whichever fellowship you apply to...in interviews, this is also a decent answer to the question "so why do you want to do a 6 year vs. 4 year residency?"

One other point- Toofache is right that if you want to do a plastic surgery residency or "fellowship" (which is the same thing if you want to become a board certified plastic surgeon) after a 6 year OMS residency, you have to have completed 2 years of General Surgery...the catch is that no part of those 2 years can be spent on the OMS service...problem is that virtually every 6 year OMS residency includes OMS rotations during the 1-2 years of General Surgery, which makes you disqualified to enter a plastics residency right out of OMS residency. Most likely you'd have to do 1-2 MORE years of General Surgery AFTER your 6 year OMS residency to be qualified to apply to a 2-3 year plastic surgery residency...4+4+6+2+2-3 = crazy! J/K...do what you love...