Disclaimer, terms & privacy
What we collect, who processes it, what this site is and is not, and how to have anything deleted.
Last updated August 13, 2026
Educational use only
PlasticsPulse is an independent, student-built educational resource for medical students interested in plastic & reconstructive surgery. Nothing on this site is medical advice, and using it creates no physician–patient relationship. Content about residency applications, research, and careers is general information, not individualized advising. Make decisions with your own school’s advisors and mentors.
Accuracy
Match statistics, program details, deadlines, journal metrics, and research-position listings are compiled from publicly available sources (NRMP, AAMC, ACGME, program and society websites) and are cited where shown. This information changes as programs and societies update their own pages, so confirm dates and requirements with the official source before you plan around them. If you spot something that needs updating, email plasticspulse@gmail.com or use the feedback button and we’ll correct it.
No affiliation
PlasticsPulse is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Drexel University, Drexel University College of Medicine, the NRMP, AAMC, ACGME, NIH/NLM, ASPS, PRS Med Ed, or any residency program, journal, hospital, or organization mentioned on this site. All names and marks are used for identification only and belong to their owners. The views here are the developers’ own, expressed as students, not on behalf of any institution.
Clinical images
Anatomy and clinical images are reproduced from public-domain and Creative Commons–licensed collections, plus a small number of AI-generated diagrams that are labeled as such where shown and are illustrative only, not clinically validated. All are credited where displayed. Some depict real surgical content and are shown for education. If you hold rights to an image and believe it is miscredited or misused, contact us and we will correct or remove it promptly.
External links
Links to third-party sites (program pages, journals, application portals) are provided for convenience. We don’t control those sites and aren’t responsible for their content, availability, or how they handle your data.
Privacy
No ads, and nothing we collect is ever sold or shared. Your roadmap progress and Signal Planner list are stored only on your own device (browser storage) and are never transmitted to us. Your saved shortlist also lives on your device; if you are signed in, it is additionally stored on your own account so it follows you between devices, and clearing it here clears it there. The feedback and mentorship forms send only what you type; submissions are emailed to us via our form provider (Web3Forms) and used solely to respond to you and to facilitate mentor–mentee introductions, and never displayed publicly. Article data is fetched by your browser directly from the National Library of Medicine’s public API, so those requests are governed by NIH/NLM’s privacy policy. You can delete your account yourself from the account page, and email us any time to have anything else deleted.
Accounts and the mailing list
The downloads sit behind a free account. You can sign in three ways: an email and a password, a one-time link emailed to you if you would rather not make another password, or your Google account. If you choose Google, Google tells us your email address and your name, and nothing else; we never see your Google password, and we do not get access to anything else in your Google account. Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider and are never visible to us. We keep your email address, plus your first name, school, and year if you choose to add them, and whether you asked for email updates. That is all. We use school and year only to judge what is worth sending and who the site is actually reaching. Accounts are handled by Supabase, our authentication provider; mailing-list signups made through the forms elsewhere on the site (your email, plus the name, school, and stage you enter, and which page the form was on) reach us through Web3Forms and a private Google Sheet, which means those signups are also processed by Google. Nothing is sold or shared with anyone. You can unsubscribe at any time, and delete your account and every detail attached to it yourself with the Delete my account button on your account page, or by emailing plasticspulse@gmail.com.
Analytics
We use Vercel Web Analytics to count page views, so we can tell which pages are worth the effort of maintaining. It is cookieless: it sets no tracking cookie, does not fingerprint your device, and cannot follow you to other sites. What we see is aggregate, how many people opened a page, roughly where in the world they were, and which site sent them. We cannot see who you are from it, and it is not connected to your account. (Until July 2026 this was Cloudflare Web Analytics; it changed when we moved where the site is hosted, and it was cookieless in the same way.)
We also count a short list of actions, so we can tell what is actually useful rather than only what was opened: which program or journal sites get clicked through to (we record the destination site, never the full link), which PDFs get downloaded, which roadmap stage or procedure gets opened, when something is saved, when a signed-out visitor meets a sign-in prompt, and when a sign-up button is clicked (recorded only as which page it was on). These are counted the same anonymous, aggregate way as page views.
Two things we deliberately do not do. We never send anything you type: when you use the search box we record only how many results came back, because a count of zero tells us we are missing something and the words do not. And no event carries any identifier, so none of it is linked to your account, your email, or you.
No warranty; limitation of liability
This site is provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied. To the fullest extent permitted by law, PlasticsPulse and its developers are not liable for any loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, the site or its content.
Copyright
© 2026 PlasticsPulse · Nicholas Ranellone & Jagger Godarzi. Original content, design, and code may not be reproduced or redistributed for commercial purposes without permission. Third-party data and images remain subject to their own licenses and attributions.