Plastic Surgery in Wars, Disasters and Civilian Life

Plastic Surgery in Wars, Disasters and Civilian Life Synopsis

The specialty of plastic surgery was developed and named by Sir Harold Gillies following his work between the two world wars reconstructing severely damaged servicemen from the First World War. Sir Harold went on to inspire and train other surgeons from around the world. Among them was his cousin Sir Archibald McIndoe, who in the Second World War set up the unit at East Grinstead Hospital which looked after severely burned airmen and other servicemen. The airmen themselves set up the famous Guinea Pig Club which gave enormous social and often financial support to the severely injured. After the Second World War specialised burn units were created throughout the UK, including one at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where Anthony Roberts served. One of the Royal Air Force hospitals with a plastic surgery unit was then at RAF Halton, a few miles from Stoke Mandeville and from which there was a considerable input in the training of military surgeons in burns and plastic surgery. Teams from the Stoke Mandeville unit were involved in giving aid in four war zones, including Sarajevo, and six international disasters. Because of this involvement in all these situations Professor Roberts taught junior surgeons from the three British services and those of several foreign countries. As well as his military involvement, Anthony Roberts spent ten years working motor racing at Formula One level, providing immediate and vital treatment to drivers who suffered serious injuries and burns following accidents on the track. He was involved in treating casualties from the Bradford City football stadium fire in 1985 that claimed 56 lives and resulted in hundreds more being injured, many of them with severe burns. There have been enormous changes in the specialty over the past fifty years and a detailed view of these is given in an absorbing account of this life-enhancing surgery by one who served on the frontline in difficult and dangerous situations around the world.