Cosmetic / Plastic Surgery – Information for GPs

Plastic surgery is routinely commissioned for patients undergoing treatment for:

• trauma and surgery; acute repair and acute reconstruction
• cancer surgery and reconstruction
• burns, acute care and reconstruction

Patients in these circumstances may be referred directly to secondary care

Cosmetic surgical procedures for the correction of changes associated with age, pregnancy, weight or because of unhappiness with body image are not routinely commissioned or performed

All requests for funding need to be made via the Individual Funding Request (IFR) Panel for in circumstances where:

• the patient is different to the general population of patients who would normally be refused the healthcare intervention
• there are good grounds to believe that the patient is likely to gain significantly more benefit from the procedure