Originally posted by Floyd77803:
•frankly, I think derm is a joke. I want to be a doctor to make a difference, to really touch somebody's life, and I don't mean by popping their pimples. It's almost like there are critical fields that deal with life and death (ie. surgery, IM, EM, etc.)and then there are the fields that tend to make life better (ie. derm, plastic surgery) Well I want to have to knowledge not to pop a zit, but to crack a chest and a save a life. That's what medicine is to me.•
While you are certainly entitled to your opinion about what medicine entails and what is right for you, you may wish to reconsider your stance on Plastic Surgery (I shall leave the defense of Derm to my Derm colleagues).
It is true that a certain segment of the practicing Plastic Surgeons do focus on treatments and procedures that "make life better" (Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons), there are many who are involved in saving lives (without cracking chests).
Witness the plastic surgeon who removes the eschar from a burn patient and covers the extensive areas of burn with grafts - without such procedures the patient would die.
Witness the plastic surgeon who remodels the craniosynostotic skull of the newborn; without such a procedure the infant would perhaps not survive for long, and certainly not without considerable cognitive and motor deficits.
Witness the plastic surgeon who reimplants digits torn off in a grisly accident; an injury which would normally render the hand useless, a devastating disability.
Witness the plastic surgeon and dermatologists who remove cancerous and pre-cancerous lesions from the skin, H & Ns of their patients. Have you see a patient die from untreated melanoma? I have and its not pretty. I've also seen patients die with metastatic melanoma, after removal of primary lesions - without intervention frm their plastic surgeon their life span would have been considerably shorter.
I've seen plastic surgeons remove foreign bodies embedded in the oral and orbital cavities, wrapped around the facial nerve and other treacherous places. FB, which left in situ, would have posed a threat to the structures nearby as well as being a focus for on-going infection. Yes, the patient's life was likely made better in all of these cases, but at the risk of blindness, paralysis or a potential H&N infection had the FB been left.
There are numerous other cases in which Plastic Surgeons are known to do more than simply make peoples's lives better. It is true that the rate of death in Plastic Surgery is less than that in other surgical specialties (unless you choose a Burn fellowship) and that many are attracted to it because of that. But please don't discount the importance of making lives better - whether its through lipoplasty, facial muscle plication, breast reconstruction after mastectomy, prevention of skin cancer or reconstruction of congential malformations. It should not be suprising to you that people who are happy with their lives and their appearance live longer than those who are not - thus, the importance of a field which caters to this - both for aesthetic and reconstruction purposes.
