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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.

Quality of Recovery of Local Anesthesia and Brachial Plexus Block in Hand Surgery

Principal Investigator
Fanyi Zuo MD

Year
2018

Institution
McGill University

Funding Mechanism
AAHS/PSF Research Grant

Focus Area
Hand or Upper Extremity, Economics/Quality/Outcomes

Abstract
The benefits of local anesthesia have shifted minor hand operations from the hospital's operating room into the surgeon's clinic. Simple hand operations such as carpal tunnel syndrome and trigger finger releases are now routinely performed with a local injection of lidocaine with epinephrine into the patient's finger, without any pre-operative tests or the need to stay in a recovery room. Since then, multiple complex hand operations have been described using local anesthesia, with the patient wide awake during surgery. However, it remains unclear what the patient's recovery experience is like compared to more widely-accepted methods of regional anesthesia. The brachial plexus block is a type of regional anesthesia where a catheter is inserted in the shoulder and medication is injected near the nerve to achieve a long-lasting sensory and motor blockade. Currently, the brachial plexus block is favored for more complex hand surgery cases despite being more expensive, requiring greater time and resources, and having the unwanted side effect of a flaccid arm. The overarching goal of this research study is to measure the patient's quality of recovery after undergoing hand surgery using a quantitative, validated, and psychometrically-tested scale, called the Quality of Recovery 15 score. We will enroll patients in our study prospectively and randomly select them to receive either local anesthesia or a brachial plexus block before their hand surgery. Twenty-four hours after their surgery, the patients will be contacted by telephone to answer a 15-items questionnaire asking them to rank their experience in 5 dimensions: pain, physical comfort, physical independence, psychological support, and emotional state. We believe that this is the best way to assess and compare the patient's experience after hand surgery and determine what is the best method of anesthesia to use during these operations. Our secondary aims are to compare the effects of the method of anesthesia on operating room efficiency and the amount of opioid medications used during the first 24 hours to control post-operative pain. Our hypothesis is that local anesthesia in hand surgery will have a superior recovery compared to the brachial plexus block, use less operating room time, without compromising post-operative pain control. We hope to debunk misconceptions of local anesthesia in hand surgery, currently thought to be poorly tolerated and ineffective in controlling post-operative pain.

Biography
Dr. Fanyi Meng is a resident in plastic and reconstructive surgery, currently undergoing her third year of training at the McGill University Health Centre, in Montreal, Canada. While completing her medical school at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada, she had the opportunity to intern at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, which jumpstarted her passion for population health and health policy. She is dedicated to patient care and has developed a keen interest in quality improvement in the hospital and patient outcomes research. In addition to hand surgery, she is also working collaboratively with her anesthesia colleagues to improve patient comfort and recovery in breast reconstruction surgery.