Tongchun Mao (毛彤春)
Deputy Director & Head of Aesthetic Surgery · Vice Chief Physician, Licensed Aesthetic Attending · Lead Physician of This Site
Altered sensation after operation · distinguishing a recovering nerve from a trapped one · revision and scar release
Dr. Tongchun Mao is an aesthetic surgeon at Chongqing West District Hospital, where he is Deputy Director and Head of Aesthetic Surgery in its Plastic Surgery & Aesthetics Medical Center and the responsible physician for this site. He personally performs more than 700 operations a year, within hospital standards of assessment, anaesthesia and follow-up.
On this site his part is the judgement about time. He begins an assessment of altered sensation by establishing what was operated on and when, then tests movement before he tests feeling, because a motor finding changes the urgency and the timetable for repair. He maps the numb area and compares its shape against what the operation would be expected to produce, and he reads the direction of travel across reviews rather than the severity on any one day. Where a scar is tethering a branch or a collection is pressing on a nerve, he will offer an operation and explain what it can realistically change. Where nothing mechanical is going on, he says so and sets a review interval instead of operating, because waiting is a decision that has to be made deliberately rather than drifted into.
Clinical focus
Time is the test, and it has to be used deliberately
A numb patch that is shrinking and tingling is recovering, and the honest answer in the early months is to protect it and watch the direction. A patch that is enlarging, painful or unchanged at six months is a different problem, and it is assessed for what can be done about it. The mistake in both directions is the same one — deciding too early, or never deciding at all.
