The Impact of COVID-19 on Plastic Surgery Home Program Match Rates

Background Historically, integrated plastic surgery is one of the most competitive specialties in the residency match. In the 2020-2021 residency application cycle, plastic surgery programs were forced to adjust how they select applicants because of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting visiting subinternships. We hypothesize that a higher proportion of plastic surgery applicants matched at their home institution during the 2020-2021 application cycle secondary to the implementation of COVID-19-related restrictions. Methods Between March 24 and 27, 2021, we used publicly available, online plastic surgery-specific spreadsheets to analyze plastic surgery applicant information over the course of 3 application cycles (2018-2019, 2019-2020, and 2020-2021) for the top 50 plastic surgery programs. We collected data corresponding to the matched plastic surgery applicants' medical school, the institution at which they matched, and whether they had previous communication with their matched program. Results Our search yielded information on 128 applicants from the 2019 match cycle, 129 applicants from the 2020 match cycle, and 133 applicants from the 2021 application cycle. In 2019 and 2020, 15 (11.7%) and 22 (17.1%) plastic surgery applicants matched at their home program, respectively. In 2021, 32 (24.1%) of plastic surgery applicants matched at their home program (P = 0.032). When stratified by reputation rank, home program match rates among programs ranked 1-25 in 2021 had a large increase over the 2020 match cycle (28.4% vs 16.7%), whereas the home match rates of programs ranked 26-50 in 2021 (17.3%) held level with that of 2020 (17.6%). Conversely, for those not matched to their home programs, only 20 (19.8%) in 2021 reported having had any prior contact with their matched programs compared with 54 (50.5%) in 2020 (P < 0.001). Conclusions The 2020-2021 plastic surgery application cycle matched a significantly higher proportion of applicants at their home institution. With the temporary discontinuation of visiting subinternships during the 2020-2021 application cycle, it is likely that both plastic surgery programs and applicants compensate for this loss of in-person exposure by turning to home applicants and home institutions, respectively.