“The Maestro”: A Pioneering Plastic Surgeon—Sir Archibald McIndoe and His Innovating Work on Patients With Burn Injury During World War II

Abstract

This article describes McIndoe's revolutionary methods of burn treatment and rehabilitation of patients with burn injury and outlines his personality traits that made him one of the most important plastic surgeons of the twentieth century. As a consultant plastic surgeon to the Royal Air Force, he set up a plastic surgery unit in the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead. By using biographical data and photography, McIndoe's work on burns treatment and the challenges he faced are presented. Before World War II, little was known about the treatment of severe burns and their complications, and even less was done about the rehabilitation and social reintegration of patients with burn injury. McIndoe changed all that by developing new techniques for the management and reconstruction of burn injuries. He helped his patients become and get accepted as a normal part of society again. The patients with burn injury treated by him formed the Guinea Pig Club. Sir Archibald Hector McIndoe, a charismatic plastic surgeon with an uncanny instinctive knowledge of psychology, recognized early that the rehabilitation of a burned patient was as important as the reconstruction of his physical body. His therapeutic approach to patients with burn injury was mental and physical.