Guidelines for standard photography in plastic surgery

Uniform patient photographs that create permanent records are essential for any visually oriented medical specialty. These images are valuable for any plastic surgeon's practice for various reasons; thus, standards and recomm endations for clinical photography should be well-known. There are several articles published on this issue, but it is still not uncommon to be expose d to medical publications and presentations that fail to satisfy clinical p hotography standards. This stimulated an interest in reviewing the importan t factors that ate essential to achieve consistent, comparable clinical pho tographs with 35-mm single-lens reflex photography.