Grants Funded
Grant applicants for the 2024 cycle requested a total of nearly $3 million dollars. The PSF Study Section Subcommittees of Basic & Translational Research and Clinical Research evaluated more than 100 grant applications on the following topics:
The PSF awarded research grants totaling over $650,000 dollars to support more than 20 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.
A Population Study of the Impact of Provider Volume on Outcomes of Free Flap
Elham Mahmoudi Research Assistant Professor
2016
University of Michigan
National Endowment for Plastic Surgery Grant
Economics/Quality/Outcomes, Microsurgery
With rising healthcare costs and challenges in access to quality healthcare, an efficient and effective system of care is much in demand. Recent health policy reform initiatives have highlighted the need for a “regionalized, coordinated, and accountable” system of care. Many investigators, from various fields, have evaluated the association between volume and outcome by measuring outcomes such as mortality rate as an adverse outcome for high-risk conditions and procedures. Findings indicate substantially lower mortality rates for surgical procedures such as coronary bypass artery graft or pancreatic cancer surgery performed in high volume centers. Although there has been a large body of research examining volume-outcome association, almost all studies on this topic were limited by not having access to national population-based data. Additionally, little is known about volume-outcome association for high profile but low-mortality risk procedures such as free flaps. Since the 1972's pioneer work of Drs. McLean and Buncke who performed the first free flap surgery on humans, application and use of microsurgical free flap operations has been dramatically advanced. In this unique and innovative study, we will be using 100% of Taiwan's national insurance data from 2000 to 2014 (with coverage rate of 99% of population) to evaluate the association between hospital and surgeon volume, and a range of outcome measures (e.g. success of free flap, complication rate, length of stay in hospital, direct medical cost of operation, and 30-day rehospitalization). Our specific aims include: (1) compare characteristics and outcome measures between high- and low-volume providers; (2) determine hospital, surgeon, and patient factors associated with outcome measures; and (3) design a predictive outcome optimization model to establish surgeon- and hospital-level cutoff volume. We hypothesize substantial differences in characteristics of high-volume, compared with low-volume hospitals and surgeons. Further, we hypothesize better outcome measures among high-volume compared with low-volume hospitals and surgeons, adjusting for patient and other related factors in the model. Findings from this study will provide robust, population-based evidence regarding the minimum cutoff level for surgeons and hospitals in order to optimize the outcome measures, and inform future strategies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency for free flap surgeries.
