We live in a visual world. I remember when our computer science instructor in high school first showed us the world wide web. In the early days of the web, web pages were completely text based. As the web developed, web pages now are interactive, loaded with 4K video and hi def photos.
I do not think there is a more important field for visual representation on the web than in facial plastic surgery. We use photos and videos to teach patients, describe procedures, and to showcase our work. The world wide web allows us to reach and talk to patients from every corner of the world and even teach other plastic surgeons new techniques without having to travel.
Photography has always been a part of plastic surgery. Originally photography was used to plan for surgical procedures and to showcase before and after results. Photography was done with a 35 mm camera and photos were only available in physical format. The advent of digital photography revolutionized the industry, and the increasing quality available on digital cameras has definitely increased the baseline standards for photography
Cell Phones, Tablets and Photography
According to the Pew Research Center, smartphone ownership in the US has gone up to over 85% in 2021. Smartphones allow everyone to be a photographer and allow everyone to access the web to see photos of potential results. The increasing prevalence of smartphones and access to the internet helped all of us during the pandemic by giving us the opportunity to work from home using resources such as Zoom and Facetime. The unexpected side effects of this was that more people were seeing themselves in closeup via digital photography and saw the imperfections in their own face. This caused an increased trend towards plastic surgery procedures.
Pitfalls of Smartphones and Tablets for Plastic Surgery Photography
In our practice, we only use digital SLR cameras for patient photography. Rarely we might use an iPad for documentation purposes, but never for surgical planning. Why? Isn’t an iPad a high quality camera? An iPad and virtually every smartphone does have a very sophisticated and high quality camera. But, the lens on these devices is fixed and usually geared towards getting landscape type shots. Look at the following picture.
The left picture came from an iPad Pro and the right side picture came from a Sony Mirrorless camera with a 70 mm lens. The picture on the left looks stretched vertically. The two people do not even look the same. Why is this important? Imagine if the picture on the left was used for surgical planning. If we were to do a rhinoplasty, an incorrect amount of cartilage would be removed.
Conclusions
Digital photography has revolutionized the plastic surgery industry. On the same note, the stakes are even higher to produce accurate photography. At Athré Facial Plastics, I am a perfectionist when it comes to photography. I insist that only digital SLR cameras have been able to provide the detail, quality, and exacting representation of real-life proportions that is necessary especially in facial plastic surgery.
