PCMS_Philadelphia_Medicine_Summer2017 - 16

p h i l a m e d s o c  .org

FEATURE

Penn's Center for
Human Appearance...

How a Revolutionary
Idea Found a Home
By: Alan Miceli, MA

It seemed like a perfectly good idea,
although no one in the world had ever
tried it. Dr. Linton Whitaker - a plastic
surgeon at the Hospital of the University
of Pennsylvania - thought that treatment
of problems of appearance should be
a team sport that would include a
highly skilled group of psychologists,
dermatologists, oral and maxillofacial
surgeons and ophthalmologists.
Back in the '70s and '80s, he was on the cutting edge in
the field, being one of the first plastic surgeons in the United States to perform craniofacial
surgeries on infants. He was one of only a handful of surgeons who went to France to learn
the techniques of the surgery, that involve "this capacity to reform the entire face from inside
the skull - pushing the brain back, rearranging the bone," he said.
"The craniofacial way of doing things, and the ability to do reconstruction based on a
complex intracranial approach, became a very big deal in the '70s, '80s and '90s, transforming
a big part of the world of plastic surgery."
Transforming the world of plastic surgery is something Dr. Whitaker's been doing his
entire career. Which takes us back to his idea of bringing several disciplines together under
one roof. In 1983 he asked colleagues at Penn and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia,to
join him in creating a more effective program to help children and adults who have facial
deformities. Four years later, his intense lobbying effort directed at the University of
Pennsylvania Medical Center paid off. The university agreed to the formation of the Center
for Human Appearance (CHA).
Five years after that, the Edwin Hall II Foundation awarded CHA with funding that
allows it to carry out state-of-the-art research and education in the field of plastic surgery.
16 Philadelphia Medicine : Summer 2017



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