This was an article in Feb 2026 of Aesthetic Surgery Journal. It was looking at AI articles published before Sept 2025 looking at AI applications. There were 1866 articles. They narrowed it down to 460 qualifying studies. I just want to emphasize the explosion of people talking about AI. They also did some education on how the different AIs work.
<h3id=”ai-and-patient-education”>AI and patient education
They found 54 studies. They focused on AI applications for general patient information about specific procedures or diagnosis and FAQ. When assessed, AI answers had mixed results.
There were 35 studies on this. Many compared AI to resident’s knowledge of plastic surgery. (I blogged about one of these a year ago, and it was equivalent to a first year plastic surgery resident. But that was a year ago- I’m sure the accuracy is higher now). It cited studies where it had a “step by step” guidance for doing a cadaveric brachial plexus dissection.
This interested me. How was this being used? There were 79 studies on this, for patient triage, decision making, and treatment plan. It was looking at surgeries that are out of my typical scope of practice- maxillofacial trauma, intraoperative assessment of arterial perforators to map and design flaps, and AI augmented reality during surgery.
This is exciting. I am not sure how AI is able to help you assess where the perforators are (is it combined with ultrasound or some other tech?) but bringing more scientific accuracy to surgery would be great. I have the Vectra 3D camera, which tries to estimate breast volume. It isn’t always accurate, particularly for my larger breasted or droopier patients. As AI algorithms improve, my hope is that I can accurately, reliably know one breast is xx grams larger than the other when doing a breast reduction.
This is super interesting. How can we take complex, multivariable things and predict? When you do an immediate implant based breast reconstruction, who is going to get a breast implant infection? When someone has a large burn, can you predict survival scores and complications?
They are starting to use augmented reality with “computer vision” to make virtual renderings of potential treatment results based on patient specific anatomy and tissue characteristics.
This also is exciting. We have had morphing software on our photo systems for years. I had it on my Mirror system 20 years ago. It is currently on my Vectra system. But I don’t use it. Why? It lets me control what the “after” will look like, and I could do things on the software which are not achievable in real life. There is no place for me to enter patient skin characteristics- how thin is it? how stretchy is it? But if there were an attachment which could pinch and pull at the skin to analyze it, maybe it could tell me- the right side will stretch 13% more than the left one, so you need to adjust your marking by x %.
The study didn’t conclude much more than AI is coming and we should understand how to oversee the technology and use will require “a multidisciplinary approach involving plastic surgeons, data scientists, ethical and legal experts, and policymakers.”
My takeaways were that
But AI is getting smarter. They are learning to edit where information comes from and when the information was published. Stanford, where I trained, is making an AI based only on their doctor’s inputs. That AI is going to be more accurate than “the internet.”
You still need to evaluate and filter what you read, and to do that you still need an expert. At least for now.
(And yes, I actually read this article and wrote every word on this page. AI as a shortcut to product “content” robs the surgeon of actually learning. Learning and evolving is part of why I love my job so much- what I do today is not what I did five years ago. I publish so many journal articles from the Aesthetic Journal, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Journal, or published studies on PubMed because those are solid, respected, peer reviewed sources. Expertise still matters in this wild west of AI)
Artificial Intelligence in Plastic Surgery: Current Status, Limitations, and Future Directions
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