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By Melissa M. Thompson POST, UF Health Science Center July - August 2008

M. Brent Seagle, M.D., has enhanced the human form at UF for more than two decades, but he really loves to build smiles.

In March, the UF chief of plastic surgery led 20 medical professionals to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where the team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and a pediatrician operated on more than 50 patients with disfiguring congenital birth defects such as cleft lips and palates, helping some of them smile normally for the first time in their lives. "I can tell you the reaction of parents can bring a tear to your eye," Seagle said. "That's probably part of what charges everybody up about it."

The South Florida-based plastic surgery group Interplast South organized the weeklong humanitarian trip to Honduras, a place the group has been aiding since the 1970s. Few plastic surgeons practice in the country, leaving patients without resources for corrective or reconstructive surgeries, said Seagle. Seagle hopes to organize regular trips to San Pedro Sula and invite UF residents to join him.

Wayne Lee, M.D., the only senior plastic surgery fellow from UF to participate in this year's trip, learned to expect the unexpected while operating in a foreign country. On the first day of surgery, rolling power outages hindered the number of operations physicians could perform. "Most places in America have backup generators but not at this hospital," Lee said. "Luckily, we had brought some battery-operated headlights so we were able to finish the surgeries we started."

Physicians set up shop in a hospital that, from the outside, resembled a run-down, stucco carriage house. A one-room surgical ward housed recovering patients while the adjoining operating suite provided two operating rooms, a recovery room and support spaces. In the clinic, physicians examined nearly 100 patients who came from miles away by bus or on foot to have their surgeries.

This type of reconstructive surgery is standard in America. Children receive government-funded cleft lip surgeries as early as 3 months and palate operations at age 1. "The kids who live down there would have lived with the stigma of having a cleft lip or palate for much longer than kids in America," Lee said. Many parents cried when they saw their children's faces after the operation, Lee said. "It reminded me of how rewarding medicine can be," he said. "Sometimes we get so jaded by malpractice and liability that some (physicians) forget this is why we got into medicine."