Quality Assurance in Plastic Surgery: Reduction Mammaplasty

Continuous quality assessment is essential to keep the quality of health care high as well as being a powerful educational tool. Good surgical and aesthetic results and high levels of patient satisfaction are clinical indicators of good quality plastic surgery. Breast surgery, particularly reduction mammaplasty, makes up a considerable part of plastic surgery. We have developed quality indicators of this procedure for objective evaluation of the surgical results in general, the different techniques, and the different surgeons. Consideration was taken of the patient's subjective assessment. Data were collected on the "Reduction mammaplasty quality assurance sheet." We find this form sufficient and easy to handle and we can recommend it for use by other plastic surgeons.