Sunday, July 24, 2005

The Human Body in Motion and Plastic Surgery

The beautiful body is more than what a still picture shows. There is poetry in how the muscles and skin move during sports, fun, and just interacting. A frozen patient on a picture can show much, but no where as much as watching them moving, living, and alive.

A great plastic surgeon Julia Terzis taught me that animation, how the body moves, is important. Watching her videos documenting nerve injuries, reconstruction, and how patients moved inspired me to better understand the body in motion. Her grants permitted movies, too expensive at that time for most of us, to record the problem and track the evolution of the improvement after surgery.

Over the years, I tried to show problems of movement using still images. Standard photographic views with muscles tight can show deformities of scars. Firmer gland of gynecomastia tends to reveal itself when muscles are tight since the gland compresses differently than the softer fat. However, movies just show much more. When digital movies of the miniDV format became available, I saw a reasonably priced solution. I have been trying to document the problem and then the surgical solutions since. What I have found has been inspirational.

Check out this page about the deformity after another doctor's liposuction. The still images with muscles compressed and relaxed show the crater deformity after excessive liposuction. Impressive, but not as much as the movies about the same problem.

However, taking the movies, editing them, and finding how to make them easily available to the public takes a great deal of time.

to be continued...

Michael Bermant, MD
Board Certified
American Board of Plastic Surgery

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