Plastic surgery is a branch of science that uses surgical methods to improve the patient’s appearance. The operations can be cosmetic or reconstructive depending on the need of patient.

A surgery is cosmetic if the sole purpose is to change the features of patient that he or she finds unflattering. On the other hand reconstructive plastic surgery is to mask or correct birth defects or results of some tragedy like fire or diseases. A surgery that is done as a face-lift for increasing the youth of a forty year old lady is purely cosmetic in nature. While the same facelift can be done to remove cancerous tissues from a patient.

Plastic surgery use flaps and grafts to replace tissues of one part with another. Plastic Surgery has been important in the development of modern techniques such as cranio-maxillofacial surgery, microvascular, tissue transfer and liposuction.

The surgeons who perform plastic surgery are called plastic surgeons. Surgery includes both operations that involve high risks and also minor ones. Sometimes it may even involve blood transfusions and the risk is pretty high in such cases. Thus cosmetic surgery that involves these kinds of risks just to increase attractiveness, rarely use such techniques.