Anatomy and Art

You often hear stories about patients who don’t have access to an anaplastologist, or don’t even know that they exist.  Most people I encounter have never heard of anaplastology until I tell them.  So I can’t help wondering how people come about finding care when they don’t get a simple recommendation from their surgeons.

The first thought is internet.  Maybe I’m biased because I keep a blog, but I think that a lot of people look online for such answers.  But with most of the world never having heard of an anaplastologist, what would they look under?  Would they know to type in somato or facial prosthetics?  Maybe they would look up specifically a nasal prosthesis or auricular prosthesis.  I’ve checked, and searching for “fake ear” gets you a lot of jewelry products.  As someone who often has a difficult time finding the things I want online, it pushes me to wonder about real world methods of learning about us.

So, we know that many surgeons recommend patients directly.  And that really is an ideal scenario.  But recently I met a speech pathologist, and we got to talking about the similar types of cases that we see.  And I thought that there is another road in that you don’t often hear about.  Audiologists are often aware of us, not only because of shared patients, but also because of shared surgical equipment when it comes to implants.  Bone anchored hearing aides are implanted into the skull in much the same way as our implants for prosthetic retention in patients who decide to go that route.  But who else can we work on bringing awareness to that will eventually help us reach the patients who need our services?  I suppose that anyone working with cancer patients makes sense.  I wonder if genetic counselors and people working with congenital defects generally know about us.  And maybe we should work on getting our profession known out there among emergency teams, and anyone working with vehicular accident victims.

I am convinced that the scarcity of work out there for anaplastologists is not because of any lack of patient need, but more a lack of awareness in general of the care we offer.  There is, in this world, a small selection of incredibly talented individuals capable of making quality prostheses that can truly improve the quality of life for a lot of individuals.  I believe that we need to make ourselves better known to the population at large.  No one who has suffered the loss of a body part should be left without the option for prosthetic rehabilitation.  What we do, should simply always be presented as an option.