Lorenz, H. Peter

Background Aesthetic outcomes of unilateral cleft lip repairs have important psychosocial implications for patients who are heavily influenced by social perceptions. Online crowdsourcing offers the unique potential to efficiently recruit large numbers of laypeople to assess public perception. The aim of this study was to use the online crowdsourcing platform Mechanical Turk to compare the postoperative outcomes of Fisher, Millard, and Mohler cleft lip repair techniques. Methods Two hundred fifty-four participants were recruited through Mechanical Turk to evaluate 29 cropped and deidentified photographs of children, 8 photographs were controls without cleft lips and 21 were children with unilateral cleft lips who had undergone Fisher, Millard, or Mohler repairs (7 in each group). Respondents were asked whether a scar was present, whether they would be personally satisfied with the surgical result and used a Likert scale from 1 to 5 to rate overall appearance, scar severity, and nasal symmetry. Results Fewer respondents reported that a scar was present when assessing postoperative photographs of Fisher repairs (70.3 ± 8.6%) compared with Millard (92.0 ± 1.5%) or Mohler (88.8 ± 3.1%) repairs. Average rating of scar severity was also lower for Fisher (1.9) compared with Millard (2.6) or Mohler (2.6) repairs. Average ratings of nose symmetry, general appearance, and satisfaction with operative result were not statistically significantly different between the repair groups. Conclusions This study demonstrates the potential of online crowdsourcing to assess public perception of plastic surgery outcomes. The Mechanical Turk platform offers a reduction in selection bias, ease of study design, and enhanced efficiency of large-scale participant recruitment. Results indicate that the Fisher repair led to the most favored aesthetic outcomes compared with the Millard and Mohler techniques, particularly with regard to scar severity. Crowdsourcing is a powerful tool to assess layperson perception of plastic surgery outcomes and can be used to better guide surgical decision-making.

Introduction: Over 500,000 bone grafting procedures are performed every year in the United States for neoplastic and traumatic lesions of the craniofacial skeleton, costing $585 million in medical care. Current bone grafting procedures are limited, and full-thickness critical-sized defects (CSDs) of the adult human skull thus pose a substantial reconstructive challenge for the craniofacial surgeon. Cell-based strategies have been shown to safely and efficaciously accelerate the rate of bone formation in CSDs in animals. The authors recently demonstrated that supraphysiological transplantation of macrophages seeded in pullalan–collagen composite hydrogels significantly accelerated wound healing in wild type and diabetic mice, an effect mediated in part by enhancing angiogenesis. In this study, the authors investigated the bone healing effects of macrophage transplantation into CSDs of mice. Methods: CD1 athymic nude mice (60 days of age) were anesthetized, and unilateral full-thickness critical-sized (4 mm in diameter) cranial defects were created in the right parietal bone, avoiding cranial sutures. Macrophages were isolated from FVB-L2G mice and seeded onto hydroxyapatite-poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (HA-PLGA) scaffolds (1.0 × 106 cells per CSD). Scaffolds were incubated for 24 hours before they were placed into the CSDs. Macrophage survival was assessed using three-dimensional in vivo imaging system (3D IVIS)/micro-CT. Micro-CT at 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks was performed to evaluate gross bone formation, which was quantified using Adobe Photoshop. Microscopic evidence of bone regeneration was assessed at 8 weeks by histology. Bone formation and macrophage survival were compared at each time point using independent samples t tests. Results: Transplantation of macrophages at supraphysiological concentration had no effect on the formation of bones in CSDs as assessed by either micro-CT data at any time point analyzed (all P > 0.05). These results were corroborated by histology. 3D IVIS/micro-CT demonstrated survival of macrophages through 8 weeks. Conclusion: Supraphysiologic delivery of macrophages to CSDs of mice had no effect on bone formation despite survival of transplanted macrophages through to 8 weeks posttransplantation. Further research into the physiological effects of macrophages on bone regeneration is needed to assess whether recapitulation of these conditions in macrophage-based therapy can promote the healing of large cranial defects.