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Patient Comfort with Before and After Photography at Plastic Surgery Offices

  • Original Articles
  • Non-Surgical Procedures
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Abstract

Background

Before and after (B&A) photographs are a sensitive part of patients’ medical records, and the use of smartphones may pose risks to confidentiality and comfort. The purpose of this study was to assess patient comfort depending on the circumstances under which these photographs being taken.

Methods

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing service and REDCap’s survey manager were used to recruit survey participants. An anonymous survey was distributed to ascertain demographics and comfort in various B&A scenarios using a five-point Likert scale. T tests and ANOVA testing were used to compare groups.

Results

There were 411 respondents with an average age of 36.1 years old. Of them, 46% were female and the majority were White (90%) and non-Hispanic (64%). Nearly one-third had previously undergone plastic surgery, with 80% receiving B&A photography. Surgeons took these photographs 51% of the time with similar rates of smartphone cameras use (47%) versus professional cameras (52%). The public had similar levels of comfort when a nurse or a surgeon took the clinical photographs (p = 0.08). Patients were significantly less comfortable when non-medically trained office staff captured their photographs (p = 0.0041). The public had similar comfort levels with the use of smartphones and professional cameras when dressed but were significantly less comfortable with the use of a smartphone when unclothed (p = < 0.001).

Conclusion

To ensure the best patient experience, B&A photography should be taken by a medical professional. If photographs are to be taken when the patient is unclothed, the use of a professional-grade camera may help ease patient discomfort.

Level of Evidence III

This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266.

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Funding

The authors have nothing to disclose. There was no funding for this study.

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Author notes

  1. Allan A. Weidman and Lauren Valentine have co-first authors who contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Plastic Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, 110 Francis Street Suite 5A, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Allan A. Weidman, Lauren Valentine, Stephen A. Stearns, Angelica Hernandez Alvarez, Jose Foppiani, Emily Long & Samuel J. Lin

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  1. Allan A. Weidman
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  2. Lauren Valentine
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  7. Samuel J. Lin
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Correspondence to Samuel J. Lin.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. All study subjects consented to participation in the survey.

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Weidman, A.A., Valentine, L., Stearns, S.A. et al. Patient Comfort with Before and After Photography at Plastic Surgery Offices. Aesth Plast Surg (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00266-024-03938-x

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