Expertise
Areas of expertise
Each area below states the kind of evidence that supports it, and links to that evidence.
Summary
Andrew Mark Klapper, MD is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon practising in Delray Beach, Florida, board-certified by the american board of plastic surgery. The clinical work is hospital-based reconstruction after major injury at Delray Medical Center and Boca Raton Regional Hospital; the academic appointment is at Florida Atlantic University; and the published record covers both reconstructive technique and the economics of surgical care.
How to read this page. Each area names its basis. Published means a peer-reviewed paper supports it. Institutional means an affiliation or appointment does. Documented practice means the validated hospital activity record does. An area supported only by practice is not described as research, and nothing here is upgraded beyond what its source shows.
01
Trauma reconstruction
Documented practice, institutional
Soft-tissue reconstruction after high-energy injury, where skin, muscle, fascia, bone, tendon, nerve or hardware is exposed and the defect cannot simply be closed. This is hospital-based work, undertaken at a Level I trauma centre where staged reconstruction and coordinated orthopaedic, vascular and critical-care support are available.
02
Limb salvage
Documented practice, institutional
Reconstruction undertaken when tissue loss, infection, ischaemic compromise or traumatic destruction places an extremity at risk. The decision is as much about whether salvage restores function as whether it preserves anatomy.
03
Complex wound reconstruction
Published, documented practice
Wounds that have failed conventional treatment — exposed bone, exposed hardware, infected or irradiated tissue, chronic non-healing defects. The published work in this area argues that a persistent wound usually reflects something structural that is missing, rather than a dressing problem.
04
Hand and upper-extremity reconstruction
Published, documented practice
Reconstruction of the hand and upper extremity, where function depends on tendon, nerve and soft tissue rather than on coverage alone. The earliest published work in this record concerns replantation outside the extremities, from the New York microsurgical period.
05
Tissue salvage and grafting technique
Published
A body of published technique work on returning traumatically injured or debrided tissue to the wound rather than discarding it: minced expansion grafting, the skin tear treated as a graft rather than as a flap, and traumatic skin grafting in geriatric trauma.
06
Skeletal muscle repair
Published
SMART — the Sandwiching Muscle Acellular Reconstruction Technique — for acute full-thickness skeletal muscle transection, in which acellular dermal matrix restores immediate mechanical continuity rather than leaving the load on suture. First described in a peer-reviewed early feasibility report of three cases.
07
Surgical innovation and instrument design
Published, manufacturer record
Named surgical instruments and published techniques developed for problems the existing answer did not solve. 2 instruments carrying the Klapper name are listed in the StaySharp SuperCut catalog of Accurate Surgical & Scientific Instruments (ASSI), each with its own catalog number.
08
Microsurgery
Institutional, documented practice
Microsurgical reconstruction, and microsurgical training. Training was at NYU Medical Center, Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery, 1997–2003.
09
Graduate medical education and teaching
Institutional, owner-attested
Academic appointment as Clinical Affiliate Assistant Professor of Plastic Surgery in the Department of Surgery at Florida Atlantic University, Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, term July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2028. Resident education in reconstructive technique, and one month directing microsurgical laboratory training at Beijing University.
10
Healthcare economics and governance
Published
Peer-reviewed research and commentary on physician economics, reimbursement benchmarks, the No Surprises Act, independent dispute resolution, and the accountability structures around surgical care. This is the largest single body of publication in the record.
11
Medicolegal and billing-opinion review
Published
Published work on the reliability of billing and medicolegal opinion, including a structured framework for evaluating it.
Scale of the clinical practice
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Aggregate counts of hospital report records. Activity records and procedure entries are not counts of unique patients, operations or surgeries.