Smile Train, the largest global cleft nonprofit organization, employs a model of establishing partnerships with treatment centers and medical professionals in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). Having a presence in over 90 countries throughout its history, the organization provides support for cleft lip and palate repair as well as comprehensive cleft care (CCC) for patients with clefts. With the goal of reducing disparities in access to quality surgical, anesthesia, and medical care, Smile Train strengthens partners with training, education, equipment, and patient support grants. Furthermore, safety and quality protocols have been put in place as guidelines for each partner center, and partnerships with other nongovernmental agencies were created to increase safety in the operating rooms. The founder of Smile Train desired to apply technology wherever possible to build sustainability within the treatment centers and surgeons supporting their own community. Smile Train's model, aimed at increased sustainability, is supplemented by technological advancements to assist in the safety and quality of cleft care services provided in LMIC treatment centers. Examples include centralized online data record keeping for every patient, virtual simulations and training, and mobile applications to enhance care. Recently, Smile Train's focus is expanding CCC with nutrition, oral health, speech, and nursing care programs to improve functional and psychosocial outcomes for patients following their procedure. Despite the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Smile Train continues to provide safe, efficacious, and CCC alongside their partners in LMICs further investing tremendous efforts towards the livelihood of children with clefts globally.
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery • December 2022 identified several areas for improvement to the ACAPS standardized letter of recommendation form by surveying ACAPS faculty. Most notable was the movement toward use of percentiles for the attributes section. Perhaps moving toward a percentile format for overall rank would provide more evenly distributed and comparable data.The standardized letter of recommendation is highly used in the evaluation of applicants to plastic surgery residency and analyses into its patterns are important. Caution must be used when interpreting the overall ranking as the distribution is heavily skewed and strong biases exist between home and away program letters. Understanding trends in the standardized letter of recommendation form will be vital as it gains importance in the evaluation of applicants. Further investigation on ways to improve the implementation and design of the standardized letter of recommendation form is needed.
Wound healing is a highly complex process mediated by cellular interactions at the microscopic level. Increased understanding of wound healing physiology has served as the foundation for translational research to develop biologic wound care technologies that have profoundly affected patient care. As the reader will see throughout this series in Seminars in Plastic Surgery, biologic wound technologies have broad applications and have greatly impacted the reconstructive ladder. Despite their frequent use, many surgeons lack familiarity with the myriad of products available on the market along with each product's relative advantages and shortcomings. This overview will discuss the classification of biologic wound agents used to reconstruct defects of the skin and soft tissue along with the advantages and disadvantages associated with their use.
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