Establishment and Early Service Development of an Academic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Unit : A Retrospective Service Report

Objectives: To describe the establishment, early service development, and procedural activity of the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Unit at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH) from July 2023 to December 2025 and to summarize its initial training and regional collaborative activities. Material and Methods: We retrospectively evaluated operative records from August 2023 to December 2025; 2023 represented a partial five-month period. Counts represented documented procedures rather than unique patients or operative encounters, and separately coded procedures within one encounter were counted individually. Procedures were assigned to ten mutually exclusive categories by principal operative purpose and summarized descriptively; clinical outcomes were not assessed. Results: A total of 461 procedures across 104 distinct recorded procedure types were documented. Activity increased from 30 procedures during August–December 2023 (6.0/month) to 163 in 2024 (13.6/month) and 268 in 2025 (22.3/month). The leading categories were skin and soft tissue tumor surgery ( n = 148, 32.1%), hand and peripheral nerve surgery ( n = 97, 21.0%), and wound management ( n = 95, 20.6%). Training and collaborative activities included a facial anatomy course and participation in a free-flap procedure at another Muscat institution. Conclusion: Increasing procedural volume suggests growing demand for specialized plastic and reconstructive surgery services at SQUH. This report provides an early service-development baseline; patient-level outcomes and broader indicators of unmet need require future evaluation.