Analyzing Our International Facial Reconstructive Mission Work: A Review of Patients Treated by American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Sanctioned Trips

Importance: To identify ways to improve care to underserved international populations. Objective: To analyze the authors’ data in hopes of meeting further needs. Design: This is a retrospective review of medical missions using data from the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS) Face to Face) Database. Setting: International sites of AAFPRS approved surgical mission trips. Participants: One thousand six hundred forty-six patients who were seen by an AAFPRS mission trip between January 12, 2010 and April 27, 2017. Outcomes/Measures: Patient and mission data, procedure data, characteristics of cleft patients, patient follow-up data, repeat patient data, and factors affecting whether a patient was provided service were all evaluated. Results: Patients were seen over the course of 26 trips to 6 different countries. Patients (n, mean, median age) who underwent a primary cleft lip repair only (175, 2.5 years, 0.6 years) and those who underwent a primary cleft palate repair only (268, 6.4 years, 3.6 years) were significantly older than what is identified as the upper range of normal in surgical literature13,14 (Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test Z = −4.3, P 
Source: Journal of Craniofacial Surgery - Category: Surgery Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research