Plastic surgery is a surgical specialty involving the restoration, reconstruction, or alteration of the human body. It includes cosmetic or aesthetic surgery, reconstructive surgery, craniofacial surgery, hand surgery, microsurgery, and the treatment of burns.

In the term plastic surgery, the adjective plastic implies sculpting or reshaping, which is derived from the Greek πλαστική (τέχνη), plastikē (tekhnē), “the art of modelling” of malleable flesh.[2] This meaning in English is attested as early as 1598.[3] The surgical definition of “plastic” first appeared in 1839, preceding the modern “engineering material made from petroleum” sense of plastic (coined by Leo Baekeland in 1909) by seventy years.[4]

Plates vi & vii of the Edwin Smith Papyrus at the Rare Book Room, New York Academy of Medicine[5]
Treatments for the plastic repair of a broken nose are first mentioned in the Edwin Smith Papyrus,[6] a transcription of an Ancient Egyptian medical text, some of the oldest known surgical treatise,