Restoring their looks

Most people associate plastic surgery with glamour. They see it as trickery designed to hide one's flaws while enhancing one's looks. But that's hardly the whole story: an important part of corrective procedures is reconstructive surgery.

Professor Andrew Burd knows both sides well. He is head of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and works at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Over the past 30 years, he has performed both cosmetic and reconstructive surgeries - several hundred of them each year.

Burd approaches his job with a sort of 'Robin Hood' mentality: he performs cosmetic surgery on well-off patients so as to raise money for research and treatment of the less-privileged members of society.

Through reconstructive surgery, he can help change people's lives. He works to restore the features and physical appearances of people deformed and disfigured by trauma, tumours or congenital diseases.

That's no easy task. Burd's routine includes replacing pigmented skin with artificial skin in operations for patients with skin cancer, vascular malformations and chronic wounds and scars. He is also involved in training the future generation of plastic surgeons in Hong Kong.

'To take a young child who is trapped in a 'prison' of scar tissue and, through a variety of surgical procedures and techniques, give them freedom is immensely satisfying, both professionally and personally,' the British doctor says.

Burd concedes that he once wanted to be a writer and explorer before he took up medicine as a profession.