The Plastic Surgery Foundation
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Grants We Funded

Grant applicants for the 2023 cycle requested a total of nearly $4 million dollars. The PSF Study Section Subcommittees of Basic & Translational Research and Clinical Research evaluated nearly 140 grant applications on the following topics:

The PSF awarded research grants totaling over $1 million dollars to support nearly 30 plastic surgery research proposals.

ASPS/PSF leadership is committed to continuing to provide high levels of investigator-initiated research support to ensure that plastic surgeons have the needed research resources to be pioneers and innovators in advancing the practice of medicine.

Research Abstracts

Search The PSF database to have easy access to full-text grant abstracts from past PSF-funded research projects 2003 to present. All abstracts are the work of the Principal Investigators and were retrieved from their PSF grant applications. Several different filters may be applied to locate abstracts specific to a particular focus area or PSF funding mechanism.

Postop Antibiotics for Immediate Breast Reconstruction: A RCT

Principal Investigator
Brett Phillips MD, MBA

Year
2011

Institution
SUNY at Stony Brook

Funding Mechanism


Focus Area


Abstract
In 2009, over 86,000 women underwent breast reconstruction. Tissue expander/implant based reconstructions were the most frequent method with approximately 57,000 operations performed last year. Despite a continued increase in the amount of procedures performed yearly, breast reconstruction still has a high overall complication rate, reported to be as high as 53%, with incidence of infection reaching 20%. Surgeons commonly place closed-suction drains and prescribe prophylactic antibiotics until drains are removed, which may be several weeks. This contrasts current CDC recommendations of stopping antibiotics at a maximum of 24 hours after clean elective surgery. Currently, there are no prospective randomized controlled trials demonstrating that long-term antibiotic prophylaxis improves outcomes for breast reconstruction patients. We plan to determine whether there is a difference in complications in tissue-expander based immediate breast reconstruction between patients who receive 24 hours of postoperative antibiotics versus patients who receive prophylactic antibiotics until drain removal. We hypothesize that there is no significant difference in infection rates between these patients. Patients will be enrolled in a randomized controlled trial in which they will be placed into two study arms based on antibiotic duration, with operative and postoperative antibiotic and drain care protocols standardized. Our primary outcome is surgical site infection as defined by the CDC. The study endpoint is one year post-op or second stage implant exchange procedure. Unnecessary prolonged antibiotic administration presents additional risks to our patients including systemic side effects, increased costs, super-infection, and growth of resistant organisms. This study will provide evidence-based guidelines for postoperative antibiotic prophylaxis in breast reconstruction.