Chest Scars—Acceptable or Unacceptable?
Scars—the first thing that people think when they see one is to cover it. They think it’s shameful or ugly, sometimes going a step further to surgically remove it. Imagine having multiple scars on the side of your chest one day, but even if it means the success of cardiac surgery, you would have to live with these permanent marks forever. Now picture this, seeing yourself in the mirror and an unwelcoming long scar paves right down the middle of your chest. Both sights may be considered unbearable and it is widely known that a patient may be negatively impacted psychologically after a surgery due to various cosmetic changes to their body.
This specific project by İyigün studied a patient’s self-esteem due to their body image after a major heart surgery. The study compared two different methods—open heart surgery leaving one with prominently visible scars, and a recently introduced method, robotic surgery, resulting in minimal scarring. While it seems obvious that less noticeable scars are the way to go, open heart surgery is still very common. This study determined whether robotic surgery was suitable for those concerned about cosmetics.
From start to finish, details of the patients’ surgery were documented carefully, especially the finishing wound sizes; the same materials were used to close the incisions in both operations. Patients were also performed on by the same robotic and open surgical group. To collect such abstract data, two questionnaires were completed by the participants one month before and six months after the surgery. The body image, self-esteem, and overall satisfaction of the patients were analyzed based on a scale and to personalize the study, they were asked to rate their scars.
As expected, those who underwent robotic surgery had very small scars, and surprisingly, resulted in practically no impact on their self-esteem. Therefore, there was no difference before and after for patients recovering from robotic surgery. However, the ones who had open heart surgery were noticeably affected and had much lower levels of self-esteem. This is also due to the pressing issue of scar concealment. However, while the open surgery group experienced a dramatic change in their appearance and felt much more negatively about their body image, it was not to the extent where mental illness came into play. While this may vary from individual to individual, the overall consensus proved that robotic surgery was more suited for those concerned about scarring.
It is important that after a successful surgery, patients must recover; despite success, certain setbacks such as scarring can negatively impact their mental state post-operation. This study will help future patients with their decision on choosing the surgical method that will best suit their needs—whether cosmetics is a huge variable, discussing the different surgery options and covering every factor is vital for any procedure.
4 Comments
Natalie
September 29, 2018This article caught my attention considering it made me think about the psychological effect of surgery on the patient. The simple fact that scarring from treatments and surgeries can have a mental side effect is an idea that is never really considered in the realm of classic patient care or surgery. It also caught my eye since it considered an unadvertised benefit to surgical robots, the cosmetic effect, an unseen and implied advantage. As someone with quite a bit of scar tissue all over, I understand as a patient the struggle of having such scars and the pressure to hide them; however, as someone who also is interested in the healthcare field and incorporating technology further into the future of healthcare, I found the conclusions and combination of ideas in your research article extremely interesting and compelling. A topic such as this can seem like something quite small and sometimes even considered insignificant amongst scientific findings and discoveries, but bringing it to light can only educate and inform an audience of both patients and healthcare professionals of the visible and invisible repercussions of surgery as well as introduce ideas to optimize and improve health care practices for the future.
Kate Scherer
September 30, 2018This article caught my attention because I never fully considered how chest scars may affect a patient post-surgery. Often times we are presented with the idea that if a surgery is successful, all the patient needs to worry about is recovery. By analyzing the emotional effects of scarring, researchers are combining aspects of more physical medicine mental health, which is not often explored. The way researchers came to their conclusion, in this case, is also compelling. By using a robot to conduct surgery, researchers are revealing new applications for the technology. If engineers and doctors are able to create technology such as this, one can imagine the impacts such technology would have on global health.
vgrossman
October 1, 2018I hadn’t thought much about this topic before. I think it is really amazing that we have reached a point in society where we can improve upon the scarring and healing of open heart surgery. This implies that the surgery itself is already at an acceptable enough success rate that we can then think of other particular aspects of this specialized surgery.
aidansub
October 1, 2018This article raised my awareness to a problem in medical circles that I was entirely unaware of. While we put a lot of focus on the physical healing from such a traumatic experience as surgery, the mental healing of the individual is barely given any thought, and instead is neglected while the patient suffers. Very good piece.