Prioritizing Native Breast Skin Preservation or Scar Symmetry in Autologous Breast Reconstruction? Using Crowdsourcing to Assess Preference.

Background: Recent literature on autologous breast reconstruction suggests that such factors as scar symmetry and skin paddle size impact patient preferences more than preservation of native breast skin. Since patient satisfaction with plastic surgery procedures can be largely influenced by beauty standards set by the general public, this study used a novel crowdsourcing method to evaluate laypeople's aesthetic preferences for different bilateral autologous breast reconstructions to determine the relative importance of scar and skin paddle symmetry and preservation of native skin.

Methods: Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing marketplace, participants ranked images of reconstructions based on overall aesthetic appearance.