IMFW: Life Imitates Art

So Blogger has changed its layout and everything, which is deeply confusing to a simple soul like me. If I manage to do anything wildly stupid like posting this next April or forgetting to use a title or something, please forgive me. I am easily baffled.

Anyway: back to IMFW! Today's Interesting Medical Fact of the Week is kind of related to two of my previous interesting medical posts, which focused on face transplants. There's an interesting article on the BBC News website about the fact that the University of Lincoln is offering an art course to plastic surgeons and medical students. They work at life drawing, self portraiture and clay modelling, with a focus on the real-life application for these skills: applying them in their surgical work.

It sounds a little bizarre at first, but at second glance it does make sense. The course aims to enhance students' observational skills and their perceptions of their work, emphasizing that they should look at reconstruction from a patient's point of view as well as their own.

Despite its rather trite acronym, the name of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS...) emphasizes the importance of beauty and aesthetic in the work of plastic surgeons, something which is obviously important in purely cosmetic procedures, but equally key in reconstructive work. I know next to nothing about the training of plastic surgeons, but it would certainly be interesting to know whether surgeons who go into this specialty tend to have more of an interest in art compared to those who gravitate towards other specialisms.

A press release from the university emphasizes the historical link between art and medicine, which was far more pronounced centuries ago; it was considered that artists needed an understanding of anatomy in order to recreate the human form on canvas, while medical texts relied upon anatomical drawings produced by artists, who would often attend dissections. Vesalius's seminal work on anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica, written in 1543, incorporated anatomical illustrations from artists working in the studio of Titian. Perhaps now the link between art and medicine link is being strengthened once more.

IMFW: Facing Up To Your Problems

IMFW retro-post is sneaky. Yes, that's right. I am writing this Interesting Medical Fact of the Week on Wednesday because I'm rubbish,* but I am retroposting it so it looks like it was posted on Monday, because I'm cunning. But I'm telling you about it because I'm honest. Damnit!

Anyway, last week's interesting medical look at face transplants proved pretty popular - let's be honest, face transplants are both amazing and intriguing. And everyone wants to see the pictures. So I figured that I would carry on in the same vein/paranasal sinus, because I am too unimaginative to come up with another good topic at this late hour.

But here is a link to a pretty amazing film clip of Dallas Wiens, the first American man to undergo a full face transplant, one year after surgery. He suffered serious  burns from a high-voltage wire when he was just 23 years old, to the point where his entire face was effectively destroyed; he was blind, with no lips or nose, and he had to be placed in a medically induced come for three months while surgeons attempted to reconstruct what they could. Since the transplant, he has regained some facial sensation, is able to smell, speak and breathe through his new nose. When you see how severely disfigured he was before the transplant, you can appreciate just how incredible the effects of the surgery were.

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*And because I was in the office for ten hours straight on Monday and so busy I only just managed to take a ten minute lunch break.