Sidcup's Significance

What was the significance of The Queens Hospital in the history of plastic surgery?

It is difficult to decide which of the many advances made at the Queens is the most important.  Is it the development of specific procedures in facial injury management?  The evolution of specific reconstructive surgical techniques? Or the introduction of anaesthesia using a single-tube placed directly down into the trachea? Or, indeed, the provision of, and progress in, patient rehabilitation?

Sidcup certainly became a Mecca for those surgeons interested, or involved in facial surgery.  The visitors book records visits by Valadier, who had first influenced Gillies’ decision to engage in facial reconstruction, Ivy and Kazanjian among others. Vilray Blair, a highly experienced American surgeon, was impressed with what he saw going on at the Queens. He had already published a textbook, “Surgery and Diseases of the Mouth and Jaws” in 1912 and lead the US Army medical service’s maxillofacial division. He arranged the secondment of a group of American surgeons. We know that they became directly involved in the care of servicemen because several of their names appear in the patient case-notes.

But it is probably Gillies concept of the structure and staffing of the hospital which made it significant. Here we examine the pioneering developments made there.