The PRS Best Papers Awards 2020 distinguish the best articles published in the official journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons in different categories

Dr Piñal’s article ‘Extreme Thumb Losses: Reconstructive Strategies’ has been selected as the best of 2019 in the hand category, among those published by the journal ‘Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery‘ (PRS, ‘Cirugía Plástica y Reconstructiva’), official publication of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

The editorial staff of PRS scoured data for all manuscripts published in 2019 to determine the number of times each article was read on Ovid and on PRSJournal.com. This data, of 16 months, was combined to create an average score for each manuscript, placing them on equal footing, independent of publication month. The articles were sorted by score, and selected based on pre-existing categories.

Historically, complex amputations of the thumb have been managed in two stages and often require additional soft-tissue and tendon transfer for successful outcomes. Dr Piñal’s awarded article provides several novel strategies to address these problems in a single stage using existing muscles, free tissue transfer, and toe to hand transplantation.

The Spanish surgeon has performed around 500 toe to hand transfers, constituting a world reference in this type of microsurgical procedure. Born in 1960 in Santander, Dr Francisco del Piñal is considered one of the world’s best hand surgeons.

Related content:

• The British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS) honors Dr Piñal for his medical career

• Dr Piñal honoured by his medical career at the 55th Congress of the Italian Society for Surgery of the Hand