Sixty-five years ago badly burnt RAF aircrew and soldiers prayed that they would be taken to the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead. Its burns unit was made internationally famous by Sir Archibald McIndoe, a surgeon from New Zealand. McIndoe said that he learnt as he went along and developed techniques, including skin grafting, that enabled people who had lost facial and other soft tissue to have reconstructive surgery.

During the Singapore riots soon after the war, my brother-in-law's vehicle was overturned and set on fire. One half of his face was burnt beyond recognition. He was flown back to the hospital in East Grinstead and, after months of painstaking and intricate surgery, returned to his family and career with the two sides of his face amazingly well matched.

In East Grinstead, where soldiers and pilots once waited for new faces, men and women - some of whom are afflicted by no more than the ravages of age - are benefiting from McIndoe's legacy. About 15 years ago the original unit at the hospital became redundant and was bought by a collective of doctors specialising in plastic surgery. It reopened ten years ago as the McIndoe Surgical Centre.

Surgeons whose most obvious service to the public is still reconstructive surgery after burns, road accidents, war injuries and the reparation of damage after radical cancer surgery tend to be slightly irritated that the general public doesn't appreciate the value that other aspects of plastic surgery has in medicine. The correction of congenital or acquired deformity is too easily dismissed as being superfluous, and the patient's desire to rid themselves of an unsightly feature is sometimes regarded as self-indulgent, of no more intrinsic value than the latest tooth- whitening procedure.

Times Archive, 1944: Plastic clinic in Sussex

Plastic surgery is only part of the battle for equipping some of the physically disfigured and mentally shocked men for a competitive place in life

The importance of reconstructive plastic surgery that repairs damage caused by scarring, skin tumours or the replacement of severed fingers or limbs is apparent but few people, other than the patient's family and doctors, are in a position to appreciate the renewed vigour and joie de vivre that the removal of a cosmetic blight induces in a patient. A once bullied child will exhibit confidence and a more positive character once his or her bizarre nose, bat ears or receding chin have been treated. Likewise an otherwise attractive and bright adolescent or young adult may have a psyche that has been so riven by some physical defect that his or her confidence and professional advancement has been curtailed. To want this corrected is not narcissistic but realistic. As society becomes obsessed with celebrity and youth, women - and an increasing number of men - whose self-esteem has been punctured by ageing have discovered that their lives can be revolutionised by aesthetic plastic surgery. Elective surgery carried out to enhance a patient's quality of life needs the same standard of specialised care as that to reconstruct a breast. The surgeons at the McIndoe centre undergo training to enable them to relate to patients, and learn to recognise and discourage those with imagined defects or exaggerated expectations.

The McIndoe Surgical Centre is managed by BMI, the UK's largest independent healthcare group, but its standards are controlled by doctors and nurses. The staff claim that they have never had a patient who has acquired MRSA or Clostridium difficile. The hospital is clean, the nurses friendly and skilled and the McIndoe centre is now the largest specialised plastic surgical unit in Europe. It has 20 consultant general plastic surgeons, five maxillofacial surgeons and two ophthalmological surgeons and a team of anaesthetists.

Plastic surgery, whether reconstruction or aesthetic, can be hugely time-consuming. A recent operation to reconnect four fingers amputated by an industrial guillotine, took 18 hours. Locking a theatre for this length of time would ruin the schedule of any general acute surgical unit.

Nicholas Parkhouse, one of the McIndoe centre's consultant surgeons, explained the latest surgical techniques and gadgets that have revolutionised the surgery necessary for rejuvenating an ageing face. The latest advance is a simple but highly effective wire device that will remove the furrowed lines between the edge of an ageing nose and mouth. This simple, quick, non-scarring procedure cuts the tissue that tethers the skin to the underlying structures. Fat cells are then injected with a special syringe beneath the skin of the cheeks. Fat is not transplanted whole, but taken from the abdomen, spun down in a centrifuge, dried and injected.

Plastic surgery is expensive but increasingly relevant to modern life. Many patients are reluctant for fear that they will be called upon to meet unexpected costs. The McIndoe Surgical Centre tries to overcome this anxiety by having an all-inclusive rate for each procedure so that a patient knows the financial commitment before they start treatment.

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